SlfflliENRY VANE JR.GOVERNOFl 
OF iVfASSACHl/SETTS AND FRIEND OF 
ROCEll WILLIAMS AND RHODE ISLAND 



iENRY MELVILLE KING 



w^ 




CopghtN" 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 



»«^ 



SIR HENRY VANE, Jr. 



SIR HENRY VANE, Jr. 

GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 



AND 



FRIEND OF ROGER WILLIAMS 
AND RHODE ISLAND 



BY 

HENRY MELVILLE KING, 

n 

PASTOR EMERITUS 
OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 



PROVIDENCE, R. I. 

PRESTON & ROUNDS COMPANY 
]909. 



/^ 



.'Jn 



COPTBIGHTED, 1909, 

bt henry m. king. 




PRESS OF 

E. L. FREEMAN COMPANY, 

PROVIDENCE, R. I. 



T.H 246 98 4 
SEP 23 l§09 



PREFACE. 

This historical study was undertaken for the 
purpose of forming a correct estimate of the 
character of one of the most interesting leaders 
in the English Commonwealth, of ascertaining 
the nature and value of his service in the 
struggle for freedom of conscience in England 
^nd New England, and more particularly of 
setting forth his important and exceedingly 
helpful relation to Rhode Island and his claim 
upon the lasting gratitude of its people. Few 
lives have a greater fascination for the student 
of English and Colonial history than the life 
of Sir Henry Vane, Jr. Born of a noble family, 
early catching the spirit of Puritanism, sur- 
rendering position and prospects out of love 
for the truth and the rights and hberties of the 
people, laboring unweariedly, self-sacrificingly, 
courageously, for the cause which he had 
•espoused, leaving the impress of his influence 



VI PREFACE. 

upon Old England and New England and link- 
ing them together as no other man of that 
period did, the intimate friend and coadjutor 
of Oliver Cromwell, and yet daring to oppose 
and resist him when he believed him to be 
wrong, and patiently suffering the consequences 
of such resistance, and finally in the prime of 
life unrighteously condemned and cruelly 
executed by the treachery of Charles II, Vane's 
portrait stands out amid the smoke, the con- 
fusion, the strife of his time, calm, serene, 
consistent, heroic. If this little book shall 
help to make one who has been to many only 
a name, a living reality, and a vital force in 
the upward struggle of humanity, the author 
will be fully compensated. 

The substance of the book was presented in a 
paper read in Boston at the mid-winter meeting 
of the Backus Historical Society, January 18, 
1909, and read also in Providence at a regular 
meeting of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 
February 9, 1909. Such added material is 
now included, in what is still only a monograph 
making no pretension to a full biography, as 



PREFACE. Vll 

will give, it is hoped, a clear and intelligible 
portrait of Vane and a true account of his 
connection with the greatest movement in 
modern history. 

Henry Melville King. 
Providence, August, 1909. 



CONTENTS. 

Sketch OF Vane's Life AND Service. . . 9-132" 

Appendix A — Cotton and Vane 133 

Appendix B — Contemporary Appreciations of 

Vane. 153 

Appendix C — Additional Modern Appreciations 

of Vane 162 

Appendix D — Winthrop and Vane 183 

Appendix E— The Famous Synod of 1637. . . 186 
Appendix F — Vane 's Conception of Civil Gov- 
ernment. . . . 189 

Appendix G — Vane 's Denial of All Complicity 

with the Execution of the King. . . .191 

Appendix H — Vane 's Opposition to Cromwell's 

Usurpation 193 

Appendix I — Vane's Estimate of the Cromwells, 

Father and Son 195 

Appendix J — Vane 's Final Confession. . . . 199 
Index 201 



Sm HENRY YANE, Jr. 

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND SERVICE 

^^The name of Henry Vane is remem- 
bered as one of the founders of the State 
of Rhode Island/^ This statement is 
made by Dr. WilHam W. Ireland, an 
EngUsh author, in his ^^Life of Sir 
Henry Vane, the Younger, ^^ pubUshed 
in 1906. This able and exceedingly 
interesting volume was written not 
only to present a fresh review of the 
great events leading up to, and char- 
acterizing, the English Commonwealth, 
but professedly to make amends for 
the neglect by English historians of the 
life and career of this eminent states- 



10 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

man. Dr Ireland says in the conclud- 
ing paragraph of his preface : ^^ It is not 
to the credit of England that she has 
done so little honour to Sir Henry Vane 
compared with the appreciation of the 
historians of the United States. The 
people of the Great Republic have not 
forgotten the help Vane gave in the 
foundation of the colonies of New Eng- 
land. Yet the claims of justice have 
increasing strength in the present age, 
and the memory of Sir Henry Vane 
has claims which will yet be more fully 
recognized.^' 

The purpose of this biographical 
sketch is to portray briefly Vane's con- 
spicuous career under the English Pro- 
tectorate, to give an account of his 
connection with the Massachusetts Bay 
and its sudden termination, and in par- 
ticular, to determine how far he may 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. H 

be justly called ''one of the founders 
of the State of Rhode Island.'^ 

Vane was born in 1612, near the be- 
ginning of one of the most stirring and 
eventful centuries in English history. 
He came of an old and prominent 
family, whose line could be distinctly 
traced for sixteen generations, and 
whose members bore a conspicuous 
part in the history of the times in which 
they lived. It is beheved to have been 
of Welsh origin, the first known an- 
cestor bearing the name of Howell ap 
Vane of Monmouthshire, before the 
Conquest. His son, Griffith ap Howell 
Vane, is said to have married the daugh- 
ter of Blod\^in ap Ken^^yn, Lord of 
Powis. The Enghsh home of the fam- 
ily subsequently was in the county of 
Kent. The name is sometimes spelt 
''Fane," and the given name, Henry or 



12 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

Harry, is not infrequent in the family 
line. 

In 1356, at Poic tiers, when the 
French King John was taken prisoner 
by the Black Prince, a Harry Vane 
especially distinguished himself upon 
the field of battle, and received from 
the monarch his right-hand gauntlet in 
token of surrender. He was knighted 
on the field by his sovereign, and a 
''dexter gauntlet'' appears as a crest 
on the Vane family coat of arms. Seven 
generations later another Sir Henry 
Vane was imphcated in the insurrection 
of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who aroused 
Kent against Bloody Mary. Though 
the instigator of the insurrection was 
executed. Vane escaped on account of 
his youth. He was a member of Par- 
Hament in the reign of Elizabeth, and 
was the great-grandfather of the Sir 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. l3 

Henry, Jr., who is the subject of this 
sketch. It is worthy of note that the 
same courage, independence, loyalty 
to conviction, and self-sacrificing oppo- 
sition to arbitrary power have been 
displayed by members of the family 
down to a very recent date. 

The father of our Sir Henry, Sir 
Henry, Senior, or ^^old Sir Henry, ^' 
as he is wont to be called, both father 
and son having been simultaneously 
prominent in public affairs, was born 
in 1589, married Frances, daughter of 
Thomas Darcy of Tollhurst-Darcy, and 
thus connected himself with an old 
Essex family, was knighted by James 
I, at the age of twenty- two, either by 
purchase or by favor, and was twenty- 
three years old at the birth of his 
namesake. He was appointed cofferer 
or treasurer to Prince Charles, and was 



14 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

retained in the office after Charles as- 
cended the throne. He was not in 
favor with Sir Thomas Wentworth, 
afterward Earl of Strafford^ privy coun- 
cillor, President of the North, and Lord 
Deputy for Ireland, of whom it is said 
that he was first "a, patriot^' and then 
'^an apostate/' eaten up with ambition, 
turning against his political friends, 
becoming a servile tool of the Iling and 
preceding his master to the scaffold by 
eight years.* But he was in favor 

* Extract from Browning's Strafford. 

Pym. 

"Then I believe, 
Spite of the past, Went worth rejoins you, friends." 

Vane and Others. 

"Wentworth? Apostate. Judas. Double-dyed. 
A traitor. Is it Pym, indeed " * * * 

Pym. 

"Who says 
Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that man, 
Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm, 
Along the streets to see the people pass, 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 15 

with Queen Henrietta Maria, probably 
through the influence of Lady Vane, 
combined with the Queen^s hatred of 
Wentworth. He was a member of 
ParHament from 1614, when he en- 
tered it at the age of twenty-five, until 
the time of his death in 1654, with few 
intermissions. Through the favor of 
the Queen, and undoubtedly by reason 

And read in every island-countenance 

Fresh argument for God against the King, — 

Never sat down, say, in the very house 

Where Ehot's brow grew broad with noble thoughts 

And then left talking over Grachus' death." 

* * * " 

Vane. 

"To frame, we know it well, the choisest clause 
In the Petition of Right: he framed such clause 
One month before he took at the King's hand 
His Northern Presidency, which that Bill de- 
nounced." 

Pym. 

"Too true. Never more, never more 
Walked we together. Most alone I went. 
I have had friends — all here are fast my friends — 
But I shall never quite forget that friend." 



16 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

of his recognized ability and fidelity, 
many honors came to him, and he was 
called to fill many positions of great 
responsibility, both at home and 
abroad. He was not only connected 
officially with the royal household, but 
he was a member of the Privy Council, 
and his name was attached to many of 
the cruel decisions of the infamous 
Star Chamber. In 1631 he was sent 
as ambassador to Christian IV of Den- 
mark, and afterward to the Court of 
Gustavus Adolphus, the leading dip- 
lomatic position of his age. He twice 
entertained the King and his retinue in 
magnificent state at Raby Castle, which 
he had recently purchased, the first 
time when the King was journeying to 
Scotland to his public coronation. As 
courtier and diplomatist he was most 
successful, a man of acknowledged in- 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 17 

fluence and marked ability, though as 
Dr. Ireland says, ''he had neither the 
unswerving rectitude nor the great 
abihties of his gifted son/' 

Into this exceptional inheritance was 
young Vane born, a distinguished an- 
cestry, unbounded wealth, great poUti- 
cal influence, and unlimited royal favor. 
Certainly not a very hopeful soil for the 
germination and development of re- 
pubhcan and Puritan principles! 

But influences were at work other 
and mightier than those of family and 
of Court. It is not necessary to trace 
them to their origin or in their slow 
and sometimes uncertain growth. But 
in England in the first half of the seven- 
teenth century the breath of liberty 
was in the air. The oppressions of the 
throne had become numerous and bur- 
densome. Magna Charta, wdth its 



l8 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

measure of freedom, had been virtually 
ignored. Royal pledges were made 
only to be broken, indeed apparently 
with no intention of being kept. Forced 
loans were demanded and crushing 
subsidies against the will and remon- 
strance of Parliament and the increas- 
ing resistance of the people. The lib- 
erties and lives of the people, as well as 
their properties, seemed to be under 
the control of the Iving, and could be 
sacrificed at his pleasure. The rights 
of the people were beginning to assert 
themselves, and men were discussing, 
in Parliament and out of it, the mean- 
ing, and the seat, and the limitations of 
sovereignty. The famous Petition of 
Rights was presented in the House of 
Commons for the purpose of declaring 
the prerogatives and liberties of Par- 
liament, and protesting against their 



SIR HENRY VANE, jR. 19 

infringement. Hampden and Pym 
were its foremost advocates. Legal 
power was one thing, and that they 
were wiUing to accord to the King; but 
regal power was another thing, if it 
meant unlimited sovereignty, and that 
the Commons disputed, and would have 
none of. Pym declared: ^^All our 
petition is for the laws of England, and 
this power seems to be another power 
distinct from the power of the law. I 
know how to add sovereign to the 
King^s person, but not to his power, 
for he has never possessed it.'^ Some 
brave men were daring to call in ques- 
tion the divine right of Kings, and 
some braver ones were dreaming of 
constitutional liberty and the sov- 
ereignty of the people. Browning, in 
his drama on the ^^Earl of Strafford,'^ 
makes Pym say: ^^The People or the 
King? and that King, Charles!'^ 



20 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

But there was another influence 
which had already become a positive 
force in certain quarters of English 
society, not yet receiving much recog- 
nition in courtly circles, but demand- 
ing unheard-of rights and liberties for 
the people, viz., Puritanism. This was 
the logical and legitimate fruit of the 
Reformation, in which, in its essential 
features the great Protestant Reforma- 
tion of the sixteenth century, on both 
sides of the channel, would have 
splendidly culminated, had it not been 
arrested in its development. The Re- 
formation in England had suffered a 
temporary setback under the reign of 
Catholic Queen Mary, but was again 
rapidly moving forward.* Milton be- 

*" Henry VIII having quarreled with Rome about 
a question of discipline, not of doctrine, left England 
legally separated from the Holy See, but not reformed. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 21 

lieved, according to Professor Masson, 
^Hhat the European Reformation, be- 
gun by Luther, had been arrested in 
England at a point far less advanced 
than that which it had reached in other 
countries, and that in consequence, 
England had ever since been suffering, 
and struggling, and incapacitated, as 
by a load of nightmare only half thrown 

A Protestant confession of faith was given to her by 
Edward VI, but taken away again by Mary Tudor, 
who restored the Roman CathoHc reUgion by force. 
Ehzabeth, who found herself between the rural dis- 
tricts which were Catholic, and the towns which were 
Protestant, took refuge in a compromise Anglicanism, 
based on episcopacy and on the royal supremacy. 
Her Church was a broad one as regarded individual 
belief, but narrow as regarded the form of worship. 
This compromise was not accepted by rigid Protes- 
tants, who were for the most part Calvinists, and who 
soon obtained the significant name of Puritans. Thus 
began that obstinate opposition which was one day 
to shatter the monarchy." 

Charles Borgeaud's "T/ie Rise of Modern Democ- 
racy," pp. 11, 12. 



22 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

off, for the full and free exercise of her 
splendid gift.'^ 

Puritanism was not something for- 
eign and separate from civil liberty. It 
was its accompaniment, aye, its inspi- 
ration, and its strength. It was a de- 
mand for freedom in religious matters. 
It acknowledged the authority in mat- 
ters of faith of no church, or council, 
or government, priestly or national, 
that is, when Puritanism was the pure, 
fully-ripened article. It insisted that 
Christ alone w^as on the throne, and 
that all human authority was dis- 
tributed equally among the sovereign 
people. It repudiated all union be- 
tween Church and State as unholy, and 
protested against the State interfering 
in matters of religion by prescribing 
government or ritual, by the enactment 
of law or the infliction of penalty. 



Moreover, it emphasized the spiritual 
nature of religion, declaring that it was 
not a matter of outward form or cere- 
mony, but vital fellowship of the soul 
with God. the Infeite Spirit. In a 
word, Puritanism, to use a phrase with 
which our ears are somewhat familiar, 
was soul-Kberty. the liberty of the in- 
dividual soul to think, to obey, to 
worship, to order its life for itself, 
knowing no guide but the Word of 
God to which it bowed, and no law 
but the enlightened conscience. 

Of course PHuitanism made a new 
party or parties, for it existed in differ- 
ent degrees, and increased the divisions 
among the people, and intensified the 
discussions, already heated enough, and 
made union of sentiment and action to 
accomplish any purpose for home and 
coimtr}' seem an utter impossibility. 



24 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

There were Roman Catholics and 
Church of England adherents and 
Presbyterians, none of whom had any 
conception of religious liberty, and all 
of whom when possessing the power, 
used it oppressively; Royalists and Par- 
liamentarians, Non-Conformists, and 
Partial Conformists, and Quakers; In- 
dependents, who were divided be- 
tween Brownists and Baptists; and 
Puritans, some of whom desired liberty 
simply for themselves, while others had 
reached the status of out-and-out Sep- 
aratists or Pilgrims, for Puritanism, 
like Democracy, was a growth, not a 
fiat. 

With no harmony in their views of 
civil liberty, and were it possible, still 
less in their views of religious liberty, 
how could they live together within the 
narrow boundaries of a single island- 



SIR HENRY VAXE, JR. 25 

empire? Indeed, four years before 
young Henry Vane was born, a group 
of religious dissenters had escaped 
across the English channel in search of 
a larger freedom, and eight years after 
he was born they re-embarked and 
turned the prow of their frail ship 
westward across the wide ocean, seek- 
ing in an unexplored and boundless 
continent room to breathe the free air 
of liberty for which their souls longed. 
Again, ten years later still, when young 
Vane was three years from his majority, 
another and larger contingent of his 
fellow countrymen, of whose departure 
he must have known, impelled b}' the 
oppressive measures of those in au- 
thoritv in Church and State, and bv a 
desire for liberty and self-government, 
left old England and found their way 
across the sea, to found here a Puritan 



26 SIR HENRY A'ANE, JR. 

Commonwealth.* Neither they nor he, 
in their wildest imaginings, could have 
thought that in six years the son of a 
Privy Councillor and an official of the 
royal household, would be elected to 

*" Crowds of victims to the tyranny of Church and 
State now accordingly left their homes and their country, 
willing to encounter any sufferings, privations, and 
dangers in the distant wilderness they sought, be- 
cause of the one sole hope they had, that there, at least, 
would be found some rest and refuge for liberty, for 
religion, for humanity. 

So extensive, however, did the emigration threaten 
to become, that Laud thought it necessary to inter- 
fere at last, and — with a refinement of tyranny of 
which, it has been truly said, the annals of per- 
secution afford few equally strong examples — to 
seek to deprive the conscientious sufferers of that last 
and most melancholy of all resources, a rude, and dis- 
tant, and perpetual exile. On the 1st of May, 1638, 
eight ships bound for New England, and filled with 
Puritan families, were arrested in the Thames bj^ an 
order in Council. It has been a very popular 'rumour 
of history' that among the passengers in one of those 
vessels were Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and Hazelrig." 
Statesmen of the Commonwealth, by John Forster, p. 
161. Mr. Forster adds ''There is no good authority 
for it, and it is deficient in all the moral evidences of 
truth." 



S]R HENRY VANE, JR. 27 

be the Governor of the new Colony. 

Into this wide-spread and deep- 
seated poHtical unrest, portentous of 
coming beheadings and bloody civil 
war, into these longings for a larger 
liberty and conflicting and chaotic 
views of how it could be brought about, 
into these dissensions and jealousies 
about church polity and religious doc- 
trine and rite, always passionate, often 
acrimonious, not infrequently deter- 
mining men^s political plans and creat- 
ing suspicions of each other^s motives, 
into this confusion of opposing forces 
the younger Vane was born. Which 
forces will prevail in shaping his char- 
acter, determining his life-associations, 
and guiding his career? 

The boyhood of Vane was such as to 
excite great expectations in the mind 
of his father. His irrepressible life and 



28 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

early maturity gave promise, under 
proper training, of political preferment 
and distinguished public service in be- 
half of the King and the glory of his 
reign. At the age of fifteen we find 
him at Westminster School, with Lam- 
bert Osbaldestone for his master, and 
among his companions were Thomas 
Scott and Arthur Haselrige, both of 
whom were to be heard from later in 
the national councils. At about six- 
teen years of age, says Anthony Wood, 
in Athenoe Oxonienses, ^^Vane became a 
gentleman commoner at Magdalen Hall, 
Oxford, as his great creature, Henry 
Stubbe, hath several times informed 
me; but when he was to be matricu- 
lated as a member of the university, 
and so consequently take the oath of 
allegiance and supremacy, he quitted 
his Athense gown, put on a cloak, and 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 29 

studied notwithstanding in the same 
hall.'^ This act indicated a spirit of 
rebeUion against constituted authority 
and sacred custom. His stay at Mag- 
dalen was brief. Something had evi- 
dently come over the spirit of the 
youth, and produced a momentous 
change in the plans which his parents 
and friends had formed for him, and 
which undoubtedly he had formed for 
himself. Some force outside of the in- 
fluence of his family and the royal 
court had struck him, and turned him 
from the prescribed track, and given 
him a new vision of life and duty. 
That force can best be defined, and 
that change described, in his own lan- 
guage. In a review of his life in after 
years Vane said: ^^I was born a gen- 
tleman, had the education, temper and 
spirit of a gentleman as well as others, 



30 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

being in my youthful days inclined to 
the vanities of this world, and to that 
which they call good fellowship, judg- 
ing it to be the only way of accom- 
plishing a gentleman; but about the 
fourteenth or fifteenth year of my age, 
which was about thirty-four or five 
years since, God was gracious to lay 
the foundation or ground-work of a 
repentance for me in the bringing of 
me home to Himself, by His wonderful 
rich and free grace, revealing His Son 
in me, that by the knowledge of the 
only true God and Jesus Christ whom 
He has sent, I might, even while here 
in the body, be made partaker of 
eternal life in the first fruits of it/' 

That is the spirit and language of 
Puritanism. The language reminds us 
of the language of Roger Williams, 
whom Ambassador Bryce calls '^an 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 31 

orthodox Puritan/^ and whom Vane 
was afterwards to know most in- 
timately^ which he employed to de- 
scribe a spiritual change which came to 
him at about the same period of his 
life: ^^From my childhood, now about 
three score years, [this was written 
when he was about seventy-five years 
old] the Father of lights and mercies 
touched my soul with a love for Him- 
self, to his only-begotten, the true Lord 
Jesus, and to his Holy Scriptures.'^ 

Vane had caught somewhere the un- 
fashionable and despised spirit of Pur- 
itanism, and passed through its initial 
experience, and was to become, not the 
fashionable gentleman of the period, 
and the obsequious courtier of the 
King, and the representative of his am- 
bitious and treacherous diplomacy, but 
a loyal subject of Jesus Christ, a citizen 



32 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

of the kingdom of God on earth, and a 
fearless advocate of the rights and 
hberties of men in two hemispheres. 
That experience was his first point of 
contact with Roger Wilhams, though 
probably as yet unknown personally, 
and brought him into a sympathetic 
relationship which was afterwards to 
ripen into the truest and most helpful 
friendship. 

It is needless to inquire where or 
how young Vane imbibed this spirit. 
It is evermore true that ^Hhe wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
not tell whence it cometh or whither 
it goeth.'^ The spirit of Puritanism, 
like the spirit of liberty, was in the air, 
and souls that were susceptible of its 
influence, caught the divine infection. 
His friend and biographer, George 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 33 

Sikes, a Bachelor in Divinity and Fel- 
low of Magdalen College, using the 
language of an inspired historian of an 
earlier Puritan, says of Vane: ^^He 
was a chosen vessel of Christ, separated 
(as Paul) from his mother's womb, 
though not actually called till fourteen 
or fifteen years ' standing in the world, 
('twas longer ere Paul was called), 
during which time such was the com- 
plexion and constitution of his spirit, 
through ignorance of God and his ways, 
as rendered him acceptable company 
to those they call good fellows. * * * 
Then God did, by some signal impres- 
sions and awakening dispensations, 
startle him into a view of the danger 
of his condition. On this he and his 
former jolly company came presently 
to a parting blow. Yea, this change 
and new steering of his course con- 



34 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

tracted enmity to him in his father's 
house.— Matt. 10: 36, 37." We shall 
do well probably to accept the inter- 
pretation of Mr. Sikes, and leave it 
there. 

That the change in young Vane and 
the new trend of his life were a great 
disappointment to the father's worldly 
and ambitious hopes, and exceedingly 
objectionable to him, goes without say- 
ing. He took every opportunity to 
express his disapproval and every 
method to exorcise the supposedly 
evil and harmful spirit. He sent his 
son to France to study its language 
and philosophy, and to Vienna in the 
train of the English ambassador, where 
he was entrusted with important state 
secrets, though but nineteen years old. 
He kept up a constant correspondence 
with his father, partly in French and 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 35 

partly in cipher, confessing a lack of 
sympathy with the questions that were 
shaking the nations of Europe at that 
time, and arraying them in bloody and 
protracted war against each other, but 
always respectful in tone, and express- 
ing regret and sorrow that he must dis- 
appoint his father ^^apres tant de soin 
et d^espence que vous eues employ ez 
sur moy." It is believed by some stu- 
dents*that he spent some portion of his 
absence in Geneva, though if he did, 
his new convictions could hardly have 
been weakened in the strong Protestant 
atmosphere of that Swiss city, which 
one writer has relieved himself by 
characterizing as ^^sulphurously pun- 
gent with the fumes of a grim 
theology/' 

Young Vane returned to England in 
the spring of 1632, bearing important 



36 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

dispatches from his father, who, at that 
time was ambassador to the court of 
Sweden, to King Charles, and dehvered 
them in person. In deference to his 
father's wishes, he seems at first to 
have sought some official appointment. 
But the condition of England was more 
distressing than ever. The third Par- 
liament of Charles I had been dissolved 
three years before, because it would 
not yield to the King's demands in the 
matter of subsidies. Sir John Eliot 
had been sent to the Tower, whose 
political views found expression in the 
memorable utterance: ^^None have 
gone about to break Parliaments, but 
in the end Parliaments have broken 
them." He died November 27, 1632, 
of consumption, brought on by nearly 
four years of inhuman treatment within 
prison walls. Freedom of speech and 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 



37 



of the press was interdicted. No book 
could be published or put on sale with- 
out the approval of the Bishop of Lon- 
don or the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
Charles and Laud were carrying things 
with a high hand. Charles had been 
on the throne seven years, and was 
already exhibiting that ''whimsical 
contradictoriness/' which, as Peter 
Bayne says, drives the student of his 
character to despair. He does not 
hesitate to call him ''a faithful be- 
trayer, an ingenious bungler, a fool- 
hardy coward, an affectionate torturer, 
a cunning simpleton, a subtle fool, a re- 
ligious liar,'' ''the vacillating yet self- 
willed, the weak yet tyrannical, tort- 
uous, ever plotting, slippery Charles." 
And Laud was his evil genius. The 
friends of hberty were discouraged, and 
the Puritan aristocrat found himself ut- 



38 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

terly out of sympathy with the things 
around him, both in Church and State. 
The breach widened from month to 
month. He became more outspoken in 
his views^ attracting the attention of 
men prominent in his social circle, and 
exciting the alarm of his father, who 
loved him, and still hoped to reclaim 
him from his wanderings which he was 
unable to understand. He sought to 
introduce him to an interview with the 
King, thinking that the royal presence 
would awe or charm him into a sub- 
missive loyalty. But the young man 
hid himself behind the draperies before 
the King entered the room, where the 
contemplated interview was to be had. 
The father then committed him to the 
convincing persuasions and tender 
mercies of Bishop Laud, soon to be- 
come Archbishop of Canterbury and 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 39 

the terror of Puritan unbelievers, hop- 
ing thereby to convince the young 
upstart of his heresies, and cause him 
to renounce them. But the narrow 
prelate was no match for the clear- 
headed and broadening liberal. Bishop 
and King were alike unsuccessful. The 
father despaired of winning back his 
son to his inherited beliefs, and to the 
son life in England became intolerable. 
At length he announced to his father 
his purpose to follow the Puritans 
across the sea to the new world of 
liberty and light. The father con- 
sented reluctantly, and the King wil- 
Ungly, glad to be rid of a subject so 
incorrigible, and who might become 
dangerous. 

Two contemporary utterances have 
come down to us, which disclose the 
judgment of the time at his decision. 



40 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

^^The Comptroller Sir Henry Vane's 
eldest son hath left his father, his 
mother, his country, and that fortune 
which his father would have left him 
here, and is, for conscience' sake, gone 
into New England to lead the rest of 
his days, ^i^ jj^ >i« j hear that Sir 
Nathaniel Rich and Mr. Pym have done 
him much hurt in their persuasions this 
way. God forgive them for it, if they 
be guilty." 

The second utterance which has been 
preserved is as follows: ^^Sir Henry 
Vane also hath as good as lost his 
eldest son, who is gone into New Eng- 
land for conscience' sake; he likes not 
the discipline of the Church of England; 
none of our ministers would give him 
the sacrament standing ; no persuasions 
of our Bishops nor authority of his 
parents could prevail with him; let 
him go." 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 41 

Before young Henry left home for 
the new world, which was then very 
new, he wrote a farewell letter to his 
father, which not only discloses the 
deep sincerity and conscientiousness of 
his spirit, but is ample evidence that 
he was not wanting in filial respect and 
affection, a letter which we are not 
surprised to have one of his biograph- 
ers say is ^^in a handwriting tremulous 
in some places, as under deep emotion/' 

^^ And, Sir, believe this from one that 
hath the honor to be your son (though 
as the case stands, adjudged a most 
unworthy one), that howsomever you 
may be jealous of circumventions and 
plots that I entertain and practice, yet 
that I will never do anything (by God's 
good grace) which both with honor and 
a good conscience I may not justify, 
or be content most willingly to suffer 
for. And were it not that I am very 
confident that as surely as there is 



42 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

truth in God, so surely shall my in- 
nocency and integrity be cleared to 
you before you die, I protest to you 
ingenuously that the jealousy you 
have of me would break my heart. 
But as I submit all other things to the 
disposal of my good God, so do I my 
honesty among the rest; and though I 
must confess I am compassed about 
with many infirmities, and am but too 
great a blemish to the religion I pro- 
fess, yet the bent and intention of my 
heart I am sure is sincere, and from 
hence flows the sweet peace I enjoy 
with my God amidst these many and 
heavy trials which now fall upon me 
and attend me; this is my only support 
in my losses of all other things; and 
this I doubt not of but that I have an 
all-sufficient God able to protect me, 
and who in His due time will do it, and 
that in the eyes of all my friends. 

Your most truly humble and 
obedient Son, 

H. Vane. 

Cherring Cross, this 7th of July, 1635." 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 43 

In later years Vane described the 
motives which influenced him in leav- 
ing home, and estate, and friends, and 
prospects, for the perils and depriva- 
tions of the New World, in these words : 
^^ Since my early youth, through grace, 
I have been kept steadfast, desiring to 
walk in all good conscience towards 
God and towards man, according to the 
best light and understanding God gave 
me. For this I was willing to turn my 
back upon my estate; expose myself 
to hazards in foreign parts; yet nothing 
seemed difficult to me, so I might pre- 
serve faith and a good conscience, 
which I prefer above all things/^ These 
are not the words of a wayward prodi- 
gal who demands ^^Give me the portion 
of goods that falleth to me,^' before 
he takes his journey into a far country, 
or of an unbalanced enthusiast, who 



44 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

throws himself recklessly into a cause 
without understanding its merits or its 
issues, but of a calm, level-headed, con- 
scientious man, who loved God and his 
fellow men, and who believed that God 
had given him light and a divine mis- 
sion, to which he must be loyal at 
whatever sacrifice to himself. 

Vane reached Boston, October 6, 
1635, in the ship '^ Abigail.'^ Two of 
his fellow passengers were John Win- 
throp, Jr., who became Governor of the 
Connecticut Colony, and Rev. Hugh 
Peters, who became the minister in 
Salem, taking the place vacated by 
Roger Williams when he was com- 
pelled to flee, and who after a brief 
residence in America returned to Eng- 
land, and became chaplain of Oliver 
Cromwell. Vane^s arrival was hailed 
with great rejoicing by the Massa- 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 45 

chusetts Colonists, the most of whom 
were of comparatively humble estate, 
and whose hearts were elated by the 
presence of the representative of a 
noble family, high in the favor of the 
Court, who had, out of conscientious 
conviction and sympathy of views, 
surrendered the most exalted social 
position and the most flattering pros- 
pects to cast in his lot with those who 
were living in voluntary exile and in 
primitive simplicity, not to say in cir- 
cumstances sometimes of painful dis- 
comfort. The town had been settled 
only five years before. Their houses 
were Uttle more than huts, poorly pro- 
tected against the severity of the New 
England chmate. Their streets were 
winding paths, some of which Boston 
has never been able to straighten. 
Their resources and supphes were of the 



46 SIR HENEY VANE, JR. 

most meager kind. They had no edu- 
cational and few social advantages. 
Their only comfort was that they were 
in the path of duty, which as yet did 
not open very far into the future, that 
they had found a place of liberty which 
as yet was little understood and de- 
fined even by the wisest of them,* 
that they had been drawn together 

* "By law the civil government was distinct from the 
ecclesiastical, but in fact it was strictly subordinate to 
it. Owing to their moral influence, the pastors and 
elders formed a sort of Council of Ephors; no impor- 
tant decision was arrived at without their consent. 
They spoke in the name of the Divine Will revealed in 
the Bible, and their sentence could only be appealed 
against by calling in question their interpretation. 

'When a Commonwealth hath liberty to mould its 
own frame {Scripturoe plenitudinem adoro), I conceive/ 
writes Cotton, ' the Scripture hath given full direction 
for the right ordering of the same. It is better that 
the Commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth 
of God's house, which is his Church, than to accom- 
modate the Church's frame to the civil State.' 

Thus was founded the theocratic Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts, with none like it to be found in history, 
except the Republic of Calvin; like it, brave, austere, 



SIR hEnhy vane, jr. 47 

and drawn across the ocean by a un- 
animity of conviction which proved to 
be not so unanimous after all ; and pos- 
sibly in the memory of the pleasant 
homes and the more abundant life 
which they had enjoyed in the old 
world. The following lines were writ- 
ten by John Cotton^ who had been 
Fellow and Dean of Emmanuel College, 
rector of the beautiful St. Botolph^s 
church in Boston, in Lincolnshire, had 
wielded a great influence as a Church- 
man and then as a Non-Conformist, but 
who came to the Boston in the Massa- 
chusetts Bay in 1633 to be one of the 
pastors of its church, for as Prof. James 
K. Hosmer says, in his ^^Life of Young 
Sir Henry Vane,^^ ^'the New England 

but intolerant of inquiry, persecuting heresy without 
pity, and without mercy." 

Charles Borgeaud's ''The Rise of Modern Democ- 
racy,'' y>V- 148, 149. 



48 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

pulpits from which such constant can- 
nonading was demanded, were of nec- 
essity double-barrelled/^ These are 
Cotton^s lines : 

''When I think of the sweet and gracious 
company 

That in Boston once I had, 
And of the long peace of a fruitful ministry 

For twenty years enjoyed, 
The joy that I found in all that happiness 

Doth still so much refresh me. 
That the grief to be cast out into a wilderness 
Doth not so much distress me." 

Surely it does not seem a very en- 
viable condition, when a man^s chief 
and assuaging joy is found in the 
memory of the brighter and happier 
condition which he has sacrificed. Cot- 
ton^s experience seems a contradiction 
of Dante's familiar sentiment: ^^A 



sm henhy vane, jh. 40 

sorrow^s crown of sorrow is remember- 
ing happier things/^ 

How much correspondence young 
Vane may have had, if any, with the 
Colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, be- 
fore leaving England, and how well in- 
formed he may have been as to their 
mode of life, and their social and politi- 
cal affairs, we have no means of know- 
ing. But it is safe to say that after his 
arrival he had many things to learn, 
and that in some things he was bitterly 
disappointed. He reached Boston in 
troublous times, as if any of those early 
Puritan times were not troublous. The 
date of his arrival was, as has been said, 
October 6, 1635. This was in the very 
midst of the Roger Williams con- 
troversy, in which the whole question 
of religious liberty was involved, and 
in which the Bay was agitated from 



50 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

center to circumference. Already 
Roger Williams had been summoned 
twice to appear before the General 
Court to answer to the charges brought 
against him. The next session of the 
Courts to which the third summons was 
issued, occurred in that very month of 
October, '^all the ministers in the Bay 
being desired to be present." Mr. 
Hooker was chosen to dispute with him. 
It was an open discussion, probably 
taking place the last of the month or 
the first of November, in which both 
sides of the case were fully presented, 
and the views of Mr. Williams and 
his accusers were clearly announced 
and enforced. The gravamen of the 
charges, put in briefest form, was that 
Mr. Williams maintained that ^^the 
civil power has no jurisdiction over 
the conscience." The verdict was pre- 



SIR heNry vaNe, jR. 51 

determined. Winthrop^s record says 
naively, not to say facetiously, ^^Mr. 
Hooker could not reduce him from any 
of his errors/' The morning after the 
discussion closed, the Court pronounced 
the well-known sentence, ^^all the min- 
isters, save one, approving it.'' This 
was on the third of November, twenty- 
seven days after the arrival of Vane. 
Such was the deep and universal in- 
terest in this trial (Neal in his ^^ History 
of New England," says, that on the 
final passing of the act ^Hhe whole 
town of Salem was in an uproar") that 
it is impossible to conceive of Vane's 
not being present and listening to both 
sides of the discussion with profound 
attention. It is safe to say that this 
first experience in New England was a 
revelation to him, and it is more than 
possible, a disappointment, when he 



62 Sir henry vane, jr. 

witnessed the spirit and conduct of 
those who had sought a new world to 
escape from oppression and persecu- 
tion, and to breathe the free air of 
Hberty.* So far as is known, this 
opportunity to see Roger WiUiams, and 
to hear his bold, clear, out-spoken 
interpretation and defence of soul- 
liberty, was his first personal introduc- 
tion to the great apostle. It was the 
beginning of an acquaintance which 
was to grow more intimate and sym- 
pathetic in coming days. 

There is no record that at the time 
of the trial Vane gave any expression 



*"It was for religious liberty in a peculiar sense that 
our fathers contended, and they were faithful to the 
cause as they understood it. The true principle of 
religious liberty, in its wide and full comprehension, 
had never dawned upon their minds, and was never 
maintained by them." 

Chas. W. Upham, "Ldfe of Sir Henry Vane," p. 61. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 53 

of his own opinion. He probably 
thought that he was too recent a comer 
to take any part in the discussion. As 
has been said, the Colonists welcomed 
him gladly, not only because of his 
rank, but because of his personal char- 
acter, and the leading spirits bestowed 
upon him their admiring praise, and 
quickly took him into their confidence. 
Winthrop wrote in his ^^ History of 
New England,^' ^^ There came also Mr. 
Henry Vane, son and heir to Sir Henry 
Vane, comptroller of the King's house, 
who being a young gentleman of ex- 
cellent parts, and had been employed 
by his father in foreign affairs; yet 
being called to the obedience of the 
gospel, forsook the honors and pre- 
ferments of court to enjoy the ordi- 
nances of Christ in their purity here.'' 
He also adds that the King commanded 



54 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

his father to send him hither, and gave 
him ^ license for three years stay'^ and 
that immediately after his arrival, on 
November 1st, he was received as a 
member of the church in Boston. 

Before Vane had been here two 
months he was appointed one of a com- 
mittee of three to arbitrate in matters 
of dispute among the Colonists in order 
to avoid legal proceedings. He under- 
took mth Hugh Peters to harmonize, 
and with apparent success, certain 
misunderstandings and jealousies which 
he found existing between Haynes and 
Winthrop and Dudley. And then, 
most remarkable of all, at the following 
spring election, held March 25, 1636, 
he was elected Governor of the Colony. 
He had not then been in Boston six 
months, and w^as only twenty-four 
years of age. He has been truly called 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 55 

'Hhe boy Governor/' He entered upon 
his official term with considerable 
pomp and with great acclaim on the 
part of the people. But he little 
knew, young and inexperienced as he 
was, what grave responsibilities he had 
assumed or what trials would trouble 
his administration. 

Within a week of his accession there 
was a little flurry in the religio-political 
atmosphere (that was the prevailing 
atmosphere of the time) which might 
have terminated in a disastrous storm, 
had it not been for the wisdom and 
courage of the young Governor. As it 
was, it left a chill upon the mind of one, 
who should have been his warmest 
supporter, John Winthrop. Shortly 
before, Endicott had cut the cross out 
of the English flag, declaring it to be an 
idolatrous symbol. Soon there arrived 



56 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

in the harbor a ship belonging to Went- 
worth, the powerful Lord Deputy of 
Ireland, flying the hated flag. The 
lieutenant of the harbor fortification, 
which was flying no colors, went on 
board and ordered the master to strike 
his flag. Vane secured an apology on 
the part of the lieutenant, which sat- 
isfied the master, and then invited the 
captains of the fifteen English ships, 
lying at anchor in the harbor, to a 
sumptuous dinner. Under the warm- 
ing and mellowing influence of the 
Governor's hospitality certain terms of 
agreement were entered into, calculated 
to prevent the recurrence of such an 
insult, and to preserve a mutual under- 
standing in the future. 

But the incident was not closed. 
One of the ships in the fleet, named 
appropriately the ^ ^Hector,'' had a 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 57 

mate whose heart evidently had not 
been softened by the Governor's feast, 
who boldly ^^ declared that because the 
King's colors were not shown at the 
fort, the Colonists were all traitors and 
rebels/' The offending mate was for- 
cibly seized, brought on shore, ar- 
raigned before the magistrates, and 
compelled to retract his words. But 
the incident opened the very serious 
question of the relation of the Colony 
to the English government. What 
would be the consequences, if the report 
should be carried back that the Colo- 
nists had defied the King, and in their 
disuse and treatment of the emblem 
of England's authority, had rendered 
themselves amenable to the charge of 
the out-spoken mate? The situation 
was one of great embarrassment. Opin- 
ions were divided as to what course 



58 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

was expedient. The discussion ran 
high. Until at length Vane, supported 
by Dudley and Cotton, took the respon- 
sibility, and ordered the flag hoisted 
on the Castle, defending the act by 
the rather fine distinction that while 
they still declared their conviction that 
the cross on the flag was idolatrous, and 
should never be used on the Colony's 
flag, yet it might be lifted over the 
fort, as that was maintained in the 
King's name, and so their respon- 
sibility would be relieved. The flag 
was hoisted, one being borrowed from 
one of the ships, as the Colony was not 
able to furnish an unmutilated one. 
Governor Winthrop and many others, 
it is said, ^^ washed their hands of the 
concession." This was the first breach 
between Vane and Winthrop. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR.^ ^^ 

The excitement of this incident had 
hardly subsided before there came the 
news of the threatened invasion of the 
hostile Pequots, the most powerful and 
savage of the Indian tribes. The first 
intelligence was received in a letter to 
Governor Vane under date of July 26, 
1636, written by the magnanimous 
exile, Roger Williams, who had scarcely 
had time to roof in his simple cabin on 
the banks of the Moshassuck. The 
information came to him through his 
friends, the Narragansetts, with whom 
the Pequots were seeking an alhance 
for the extermination of the English set- 
tlers. Mr. Wilhams quickly informed 
the Massachusetts Governor of the plot, 
and was entreated to use at once his 
friendly influence with the Narragan- 
setts to prevent the hostile alliance. 
Mr. WiUiams at the peril of his life un- 



60 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

dertook the mission. The account of 
his service, hardship, and exposure he 
has given in his thriUing letter to Ma- 
jor Mason: ^^ Upon letters received from 
the Governor and Council at Boston, 
requesting me to use my utmost and 
speediest endeavors to break and hinder 
the league labored for by the Pequots 
and Mohegans against the English, the 
Lord helped me immediately to put 
my life into my hand, and scarce ac- 
quainting my wife, to ship myself 
alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut 
through a stormy wind, with great 
sea^, every minute in hazard of life, to 
the Sachem's house. Three days and 
nights my business forced me to lodge 
and mix with the bloody Pequot am- 
bassadors [who were visiting the Narra- 
gansetts to effect their desired league], 
whose hands and arms, methought. 



Sm HENRY VANE, JR. 61 

reeked with the blood of my country- 
men, * * * and from whom I could 
not but nightly look for their bloody 
knives at my own throat also.'^ 

His mission was successful. As he 
said, ^^God wondrously preserved me, 
and helped me to break to pieces the 
Pequots' negotiation and design.^' It 
is necessary to dwell upon this in- 
cident that we may know what part 
Vane had, if any, in the founding of 
Rhode Island. Roger Wilhams not 
only broke in pieces the contemplated 
league of the other tribes with the 
Pequots, but he was instrumental in 
cementing an English league with the 
Narragansetts and Mohegans against 
the Pequots. By his mediation Mian- 
tonomo, the two sons of Canonicus, and 
numerous attendants went to Boston 
on the twenty-first of October to visit 



62 SIR HENBY VANE, JR. 

Governor Vane, and to perfect and 
ratify the new league, offensive and 
defensive, against the Pequots. Here 
is where the Governor's part came in. 
He received the Indians with much 
friendhness and parade, feasting them 
all, and taking the chiefs into his own 
dining-room. He undoubtedly left a 
very favorable impression of his good 
will upon their minds; the treaty was 
consummated, which was submitted to 
Roger Williams for interpretation and 
explanation, showing the confidence of 
both parties in him, and the red-skin 
guests were dismissed with more parade 
and a parting military salute. 

In this incident Roger Williams was 
again brought into personal relations 
with Vane, who must have gratefully 
appreciated the service which he had 
rendered to those who had been his 



SIR HENRY VANEj JR. 63 

enemies, must have been won to him 
by his self-sacrificing and magnanimous 
spirit, and must have admired him for 
his wonderful influence and successful 
diplomacy with his savage neighbors. 
Now it so happened that a year and a 
half afterward, in March, 1638, John 
Clarke, Wilham Coddington, and others, 
dissatisfied' with the disturbed con- 
ditions in Boston and the evident lack 
of hberty which they had crossed the 
ocean to find, as seen in the violent 
religious controversy which was then 
raging, determined to leave the Puritan 
strife, and migrate southward, to Long 
Island or Delaware Bay, to found a 
new colony. On their journey they 
visited Roger WilHams in Providence, 
and were persuaded by him to change 
the place of their destination, and 
through his further persuasion and 



64 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

assistance Aquidneck and other islands 
in the Narragansett Bay were pur- 
chased of the friendly Sachems, Canoni- 
cus and Miantonomo, ^^on considera- 
tion of forty fathoms of white beads/ ^ 
for the new settlement. 

It was this transaction to which Roger 
Williams referred in a letter written in 
1658, twenty years later, the language 
of which has been misunderstood, as 
if it ascribed an equal and joint agency 
to Vane and himself, and as if the name 
'^ Rhode Island ^^ referred to the whole 
State as it is now used, instead of being 
limited in its application to Aquidneck 
as was formerly the case, a mistake 
which is sometimes made by modern 
writers on our early history. The 
language of Roger Williams's letter is 
as follows: ^^It was not price nor 
money that could have purchased 



Sm HENRY VANE, JR. 65 

Rhode Island (i. e. Aquidneck). Rhode 
Island (i. e. Aquidneck) was obtained 
by love; by the love and favor which 
that honorable gentleman, Sir Henry 
Vane, and myself, had with that great 
Sachem, Miantonomo, about the league 
which I procured between the Massa- 
chusetts Enghsh and the Narragansetts 
in the Pequot war." It will be noticed 
that the influence of Governor Vane 
dates back to the kindly reception 
which he gave to the Indians at the 
time the league was entered into, the 
love which he showed to them at that 
time, and the favorable impression 
which he made upon their minds. 
Roger Williams at the time of writing 
the letter, twenty years afterward, had 
been receiving very recent attentions 
from Sir Henry, and special cooperation 
and aid in behalf of the charter of the 



66 stR henhy vane, jr. 

State, and naturally he thought of his 
early connection with him at the time 
of the formation of the league mth 
the Narragansetts, to which friendly 
league he very generously ascribed 
some measure of the success in the 
purchase of Aquidneck. Arnold in the 
^^ History of the State of Rhode Is- 
land/' records the transaction and 
explains Williams's account of it in 
these words: ^^ Through the powerful 
influence of Roger Williams, who in his 
account of the affair, modestly divides 
the honor with Sir Henry Vane, nego- 
tiations were shortly concluded with 
Canonicus and Miantonomo for the 
purchase of the island" [of Aquidneck]. 
It is very evident that Sir Henry's 
influence was most remote and indirect, 
and that he had no active participation 
in the purchase, which Roger Williams 



SIR HfiNHY VANE, jR. 67 

seems to declare was not a purchase at 
all, but was won by love, though he 
adds: ^^It is true I advised a gratuity 
to be presented to the Sachem and to 
the natives.'^ That probably refers to 
^Hhe forty fathoms of white beads /^ 

Yet it is principally upon the basis of 
Roger Williams^s language, which is so 
easily misunderstood, that Dr. Ireland 
claims that ^^Sir Henry Vane is re- 
membered as one of the founders of 
Rhode Island/^ Indeed, Dr. Ireland 
quotes the language of Roger Williams 
still further in these words: ^^This I 
mention, as the truly noble Sir H. 
Vane had been so good an instrument 
in the hand of God for procuring this 
island from the barbarians, as also for 
procuring and confirming the charter, 
that it may be recorded with all thank- 
fulness.^^ This, too, must be regarded 



68 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

as the expression of a noble and appre- 
ciative heart, which is not careful to 
measure its words with studied accu- 
racy, when it records the valuable 
service which it has received. That 
the exceedingly hospitable treatment of 
the Indian chiefs by Sir Henry Vane 
confirmed their friendliness towards the 
English is true enough. That he could 
have had nothing personally to do in 
securing the island of Aquidneck as a 
plantation for the new settlers in March, 
1638, is no less true, for he sailed from 
Boston for England seven months be- 
fore, on August 3, 1637. Yet Sir 
Henry does have genuine and sub- 
stantial claims upon the grateful rec- 
ognition of the whole State of Rhode 
Island as one of its early friends, and 
undoubtedly its most active and in- 
fluential benefactor in the mother 
country. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 69 

A peculiarly trying experience yet 
awaited him during his year's occu- 
pancy of the Governor's chair, which 
made a painful ending of his admin- 
istration which opened so jubilantly, 
and made a speedy termination of his 
stay in New England. He was suc- 
cessful in escaping the invasion of the 
Indians, but he was not successful in 
escaping the strife of the theologians. 
It is not within the purpose of this 
paper to go into the details of that 
bitter, lamentable and to us utterly 
irrational controversy over the reli- 
gious views of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
whom Johnson, in his ' ^ Wonder-work- 
ing Providence '' (I. ch. 42) calls ''The 
masterpiece of human wit.'' Charles 
Francis Adams (''Three Episodes of 
Massachusetts History") describes the 
controversy in these words: "Not only 



70 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

were the points obscure, but the dis- 
cussion was carried on in a jargon 
which has become uninteUigible.'^ Par- 
tisan feeling was strong, not to say 
vehement and conscientiously mllful 
on both sides. The Boston church and 
community were of course the storm- 
center. The two pastors, John Cotton 
and John Wilson, were the leaders of 
the opposing parties; Cotton as the 
friend and admired pastor of Mrs. 
Hutchinson, who had been previously 
known by her in England, and Wilson 
as the criticized teacher and enemy. 
Cotton carried with him all the mem- 
bers of the Boston church but five. 
Wilson^s supporters were numerous in 
the outside settlements, for the whole 
colony was involved in the controversy. 
Vane, whose home was with Cotton, 
because of his clear and positive views 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. t 1 

of religious toleration, espoused the 
cause of Mrs. Hutchinson, but it cost 
him, at least temporarily, the valued 
friendship of Governor Winthrop, who 
was actively identified with the oppos- 
ing party. It led to a personal con- 
troversy between the two, in which we 
of to-day believe that Winthrop was 
wrong and that Vane was right, and 
had the better of the argument. At 
any rate he left on record an admirable 
presentation of the true principle of 
religious liberty which they had all 
crossed "the sad and solitary sea^' to 
illustrate and enjoy, and the reasons 
for their professed belief. Prof. J. L. 
Diman says: ^^It seems beyond dis- 
pute that what mainly interested Vane 
was not so much the precise opinions 
which Anne Hutchinson maintained, as 
the great doctrine of religious liberty 



72 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

which he conceived to be imperilled. 
It was no ^^ mocking and unquiet 
fancy/ ^ such as Clarendon describes, 
but the early and clear apprehension of 
the great princple which guided and 
illumined his whole subsequent career. 
This is plainly shown in his paper 
termed ^^A Brief Resume.^' Of course 
it convinced nobody. The bitter strife 
with the deep disappointment of soul 
at the destruction of his high hopes, 
was too much for the nerves and the 
power of endurance of ^Hhe boy Gov- 
ernor."* '^At a meeting of the mag- 
istrates and ministers convened to 
reconcile, if possible, the jarring par- 

*" Vane's mind was deeply vexed by these bitter con- 
troversies. He had crossed the ocean to get quit of 
Laud and his commissioners, and here were new in- 
quisitors eager to suppress every opinion which did 
not chime in with their own. They had brought with 
them the root of all this intolerance, the conviction that 
men could only be saved from everlasting torments by 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 73 

ties/^ the discussion descended to sharp 
personalities. Even Peters, his quon- 
dam friend, accused him to his face of 
destroying the peace of the colony 
(though the divisions had their origin 
in the people, not in him), and of being 
presumptuous for one of his youth and 
inexperience. Then it was that the 
Governor, having defended himself 
manfully and sometimes sharply, pos- 
sibly giving as good as he received, 
broke down, and pleaded in tears that 
they would accept his resignation and 
release him from the responsibility and 
the pain of it all. Brooks Adams re- 
marks: ^^That a young and untried 

adopting certain dogmas. The controversy was shifted 
from ceremonies to shadowy doctrines, the covenant 
of grace and of works instead of the ritual and the altar. 
Instead of the Pope being antichrist, it was Anne 
Hutchinson, who deserved that appellation." 

Wm. W. Ireland's ^^ Lije of Sir Henry Vane, " p. 80. 
6 



74 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

man like Vane should have grown 
weary of his office and longed to escape, 
will astonish no one who is familiar 
with the character and mode of warfare 
of his enemies/' 

His friends in Boston, who stood by 
him loyally, persuaded him to with- 
draw his resignation and serve out his 
term. At the spring election after a 
heated campaign amid scenes rarely 
surpassed at a ward caucus in our 
day,* Governor Winthrop was chosen 

*"The whole town of Boston and the whole colony 
of Massachusetts was set in commotion by the rude 
theological brawl. Such was the state of combustion 
in Boston that it was thought necessary by the op- 
ponents of Vane and Mrs. Hutchinson to hold the court 
of elections at the former capital, Newtown. The ex- 
citement at this court was so great that the church 
members, who only could vote, were on the point of 
laying violent hands on one another in a contest grow- 
ing out of a question relating to the indwelling of the 
Holy Ghost." 

Edward Eggleston, "The Beginners of a Nation," p. 
335. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 75 

Governor, and Vane and his friends 
were retired from office. He was, 
however, elected at once to represent 
Boston in the General Court, and when 
the election was declared illegal, he 
was re-elected the very next day. The 
indignation at the treatment of Vane 
was intense, in which for a time un- 
doubtedly he shared, though it brought 
to him relief from his official trials. 
The religious discussion still went on 
without abatement to its painful, pre- 
determined issue. Vane did not wait 
to see it through. On the third of 
August he took ship for the old world, 

" It was therefore a time of intensest excitement ; a 
tumult was feared ; fierce speeches were bandied about ; 
Mr. Wilson himself, the pastor of the Boston Church, 
harangued the electors from a tree into which he 
climbed ; and there was rash laying on of hands among 
some of the disputants." 

John S. Barry, "History of Massachusetts, First 
Period," p. 212. 



76 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

having been in the new world only one 
year and ten months. His departure 
was announced by salvos of artillery 
from the shore and the Castle in Bos- 
ton harbor, and he sailed away from 
experiences which were often distress- 
ing, but undoubtedly of great edu- 
cational value, serving to strengthen 
his convictions, clarify his views of 
liberty, and fit him for twenty-five 
years of conspicuous service in that 
stormy period of English history, as 
perhaps England's most brilliant states- 
man, the persistent advocate of civil 
and religious freedom, and the trusted 
friend of New England. 

Possibly Vane's brief career in 
the Massachusetts Bay may not have 
been without its beneficial effects here, 
though not recognized at the time. 
One contemporaneous writer said of 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 77 

his career: ''It was of God's great 
mercy that it ended not in our de- 
struction." A remark which leads Prof. 
Hosmer to reply: ''Very likely. He 
was to become one of the greatest of 
state-builders; he tried his 'prentice- 
hand^ on Massachusetts, the very 
energy which, when well guided, was 
to be so effective, racking nearly to its 
downfall the jack-straw framework 
which the cautious Winthrop was so 
painfully erecting." To quote Pro- 
fessor Diman again: "Vane^s career in 
Massachusetts may have seemed to him- 
self, as doubtless it seemed to others, a 
mortifying failure, but he left a deep 
mark on the institutions of the New 
World. Systems perish, but ideas are 
indestructible. The curious theocratic 
State, built up with so much pains by 
Winthrop and his connections, has 



78 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

passed away. The principle of entire 
religious liberty, which, through the 
efforts of Vane, received for the first 
time in Christendom a recognition in 
Rhode Island, has continued to grow 
till the whole land sits under the 
shadow of it.^' It is pleasant to know 
that the alienation between Vane and 
Winthrop was short-lived. They were 
both men of too large mould to cherish 
petty misunderstandings and animos- 
ities, and were in fact actuated by 
similar spirits and aims, and were 
pressing towards the same goal, though 
it may be at a slightly different pace. 

Seven years afterward, when the 
Massachusetts Colonists were in dis- 
tressing need of friends at Court, Win- 
throp wrote: ^^It pleased God to stir 
them up such friends, viz.: Sir Henry 
Vane, who had sometime lived in 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 79 

Boston, and though he might have 
taken occasion against us for some 
dishonor which he apprehended to have 
been unjustly put upon him here, yet 
both now and at other times he showed 
himself a true friend to New England, 
and a man of noble and generous 
mind/^ The year following, when Eng- 
land was torn in twain by the civil 
war, the week before, the stronghold 
of Leicester having been captured by 
the forces of the King, and the week 
after, the victory of Naseby being won. 
Vane who was then the acknowledged 
leader of Parliament wrote an affec- 
tionate letter to Governor Winthrop, 
expressing and commending the spirit 
of charity and forbearance, where 
views were so often conflicting. He 
wrote : 



80 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

'^ Honored Sir, I received yours by your Son, 
and was unwilling to let him return without 
telling you as much. The exercise and troubles 
which God is pleased to lay upon these king- 
doms and the inhabitants in them, teaches us 
patience and forbearance one with another in 
some measure, though there be difference in 
our opinions, which makes me hope that from 
the experience here, it may also be derived to 
yourselves, lest whilst the Congregational way 
amongst you is in its freedom and is backed 
with power, it teach its oppungners here to 
extirpate it and root it out from its principles 
and practice. I shall need to say no more, 
knowing your son can acquaint you particu- 
larly with our affairs. Sir, I am. 

Your very affectionate Friend and Servant 
in Christ, H. Vane. 

June the 10th, 1645. 

Pray commend me kindly to your wife, Mr. 
Cotton and his wife, and the rest of my friends 
with you. 

For my honored friend John Winthrop, Sr. 
Esq." 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 81 

On account of Vane's residence and 
influence in New England and his long 
and gracious and vastly important in- 
fluence in behalf of New England after 
his return home, Mr. Upham, his 
biographer, feels justified in saying, 
^^The name of young Sir Henry Vane 
is the most appropriate link to bind 
us to the land of our fathers.'' 

Vane's life was still before him. His 
early return was looked upon with 
suspicion by those who had rejoiced 
in his departure, was a surprise to his 
friends, and possibly to himself. But 
he soon left no one in any doubt as to 
where he stood. Garrard wrote to the 
Lord Deputy: ^^ Henry Vane, the comp- 
troller's eldest son, who hath been 
Governor in New England this last 
year is come home; whether he hath 
left his former misgrounded opinions 



S2 Sm HENilY VANE, JR. 

for which he left us, I know not.'^ 
Men did not need to wait long to be 
convinced that his exile, instead of 
curing him of his ^^misgrounded opin- 
ions/' had only confirmed him in his 
Puritanism and Republicanism. After 
taking a brief rest in his old home with 
his kindred, and making the necessary 
preparations for a home of his own by 
taking to wife Frances, daughter of Sir 
Christopher Wray, he identified him- 
self openly, actively, unreservedly, with 
what he believed to be the cause of the 
people, and laid himself literally, with 
all his maturing and exceptional pow- 
ers, upon that altar. Only the briefest 
outline of the events of his political ca- 
reer, the offices he filled and the ser- 
vice he rendered, can be given; nor is 
more necessary to our purpose. 



siU Henry vane, jH. S3 

He was elected to Parliament in 
1640, was quickly and sympathetically 
associated with Hampden and Pym, 
and soon became an acknowledged 
leader. He enjoyed their companion- 
ship and support, however, for only a 
brief time. Hampden received a mor- 
tal wound at the fight at Chalgrove 
Field, June 18, 1643, and in December 
of the same year. Vane assisted in 
carrying the body of his friend and 
teacher, Pym, to its burial in West- 
minster Abbey. Godwin, in ^^The His- 
tory of the Commonwealth (I. 176), 
declares, ^^ Vane was the individual best 
qualified to succeed Hampden as a 
counsellor in the arduous struggle in 
which at this time the nation was en- 
gaged.'^ And Forster bears this tes- 
timony to Vane's political primacy: 
^^The efforts of Pym found their worth- 



84 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

iest supplement and completion in the 
younger Sir Henry Vane. (^^States- 
men of the Commonwealth/' p. 282.) 
In the mention of every group of 
Puritan leaders, however small, the 
name of Vane is invariably conspicuous. 
In the camp before York, says Godwin, 
^^We might see Manchester, deficient 
neither in the qualities of a gentleman 
nor the valour of a soldier, Cromwell, 
the future guide and oppressor of the 
Commonwealth, and Vane, ever pro- 
found in thought and sagacious in pur- 
pose, embracing in his capacious mind 
all the elements of public safety.'' 
Says Forster, '^A wide gulf separated 
Vane from the Presbyterian party on 
many of the most important questions 
of civil policy. But on the side of 
toleration with him stood also Crom- 
well, Marten, and St. John, and such 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 85 

men as Whitelocke and Selden. Milton, 
too, lent to that great cause the aston- 
ishing force of his genius/^ Again 
Godwin says, ^Tromwell, Ireton, St. 
John and Vane were four of the ablest 
statesmen that ever figured upon the 
theatre of any nation.'^ And still again, 
Godwin says: ^^It is impossible to con- 
sider these appointments [Bradshaw to 
be President of the Council and Milton 
to be Secretary of the Council for for- 
eign tongues] without great respect. 
They laid the foundation for the illus- 
trious figure which was made by the 
Commonwealth of England during the 
succeeding years. . The admirable state 
of the navy is in a great degree to be 
ascribed to the superlative talents and 
eminent public virtue of Vane. * * * 
The perfect friendship of these three 
men, Milton, Bradshaw and Vane, is. 



86 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

in itself considered, a glory to the 
island that gave them birth /^ 

Vane was knighted by Charles I 
undoubtedly through his father^s in- 
fluence, and to propitiate his possible 
hostility to the ^King was made joint 
Treasurer of the Navy. He was acci- 
dentally associated with the trial and 
execution of the Earl of Strafford, and 
was actively engaged in all the dis- 
cussions and measures that led up to 
the civil war, and was uniformly on 
the right side. The King raised his 
standard at Nottingham, August 22, 
1642, and the bloody conflict for the 
rights of Parliament and the liberties 
of the English people was inaugurated. 
Vane's voice and rapidly increasing in- 
fluence in the counsels of the nation 
were consecrated without stint to what 
he believed to be the cause of civil and 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 87 

religious freedom. He was instrumen- 
tal in securing the adoption of the 
Solemn League and Covenant, which 
sent thousands of armed Scotchmen 
over the line to the help of the Par- 
liamentary forces, and made Naseby 
and Mars ton Moor possible. He op- 
posed the execution of Charles I, 
doubting the wisdom of the regicidal 
act, and also opposed Pride's Purge, 
unwilling to consent to any use of ar- 
bitrary and despotic power.* He was 



*"Next morning (the army having advanced mean- 
while from Windsor to London) the city guard was 
withdrawn from Westminster by its commander Skip- 
pon, and the posts were occupied by three regiments 
under the command of Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel 
Henson, and Colonel Pride. The latter officer, with a 
list in his hand, took his station at the door of the 
House of Commons, and as the members entered and 
were identified by the doorkeeper and Lord Grey of 
Groby, who stood near Pride for the purpose, arrested 
in succession, and during a period of three days, the 
Presbyterian majority, in all upward of a hundred 



88 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

the friend and admired associate of 
Milton, the great Repubhcan states- 
man, believer in truth and freedom and 
^' Poet Laureate of the Puritans/'* and 
for a time the most intimate associate 
and powerful supporter of Cromwell, 
though later he broke with the Great 
Commoner, objecting to what he be- 

and fifty members, several of whom were afterward 
unconditionally restored." 

John Forster's " The Statesmen of the Common- 
wealth,'' p. 370. 

*" Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose 
to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do 
injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt 
her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who- 
ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open 
encounter? * * * Yoy who knows not that truth 
is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, 
no strategems, nor licensings to make her victorious; 
those are the shifts and the defences that error uses 
against her power." 

From Milton's " Areopagitica." 

" It seems to me sometimes as if New England were 
a translation into prose of the thought that was work- 
ing in Milton's mind from its early morning to its sun- 
set." — Frederic D. Maurice. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 89 

lieved to be his unwarranted and 
dangerous usurpation of power, and 
was in consequence imprisoned by 
him.* He was instrumental in con- 
junction with Cromwell in pushing to 
a successful issue what Forster calls 
'^one of the most masterly strokes of 
policy that had yet distinguished the 



*When Cromwell dissolved the Parliament by force 
of arms, Milton than whom he had no wiser counsellor, 
sent to him a message of warning, which contained 
these memorable words — "Recollect that thou thyself 
canst not be free, unless we are so ; for it is fitly so pro- 
vided in the nature of things that he who conquers 
another's liberty, in the very act loses his own; he 
becomes, and justly, the foremost slave. But indeed, 
if thou, the patron of our liberty, should undermine 
the freedom, which thou hadst but so lately built up, 
this would prove not only deadly and destructive to 
thine own fame, but to the entire and universal cause 
of religion and virtue. The very substance of piety 
and honour will be seen to have evaporated, and the 
most sacred ties and engagements will cease to have 
any value with our posterity; than which a more 
grievous wound cannot be inflicted on human interests 
and happiness, since the fall of the first father of our 
race." 

7 



90 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

statesmanship of the times/' viz., ^Hhe 
self denying ordinance and the new 
model/' which placed the military 
leadership in the hands of the In- 
dependents. 

He was made Secretary of the Navy, 
and pushed every measure to promote 
the efficiency of both army and navy; 
indeed, under his supervision and ad- 
ministration the English navy was so 
enlarged and equipped that it defeated 
the Dutch fleet under Van Tromp., and 
England became mistress of the sea. 
Such was his victorious leadership that 
he was declared to be in Parliament 
what Cromwell was in the army. Rich- 
ard Baxter's exact words are : '' He was 
that wdthin the House that Cromwell 
was without." 

Under Cromwell Vane, being out of 
sympathy with his measures, retired 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 91 

for a period to private life, during 
which period he wrote his principal 
theological work, entitled '^A Retired 
Man^s Meditations/^ for Vane was not 
only a deeply religious man, a genuine 
Puritan, but he was a profound student 
of the Scriptures and a disciple of 
Origen, especially delighting in the 
study of the prophecies, and given to 
excessive allegorical interpretation, so 
that men have entertained entirely 
opposite views as to the value of the 
results of his studies. He also wrote 
at this time, ^'The Healing Question,^' 
a frank and manly reply to what he 
supposed to be an honest public appeal 
by Cromwell for light. It was this 
publication which he sent to Cromwell, 
that, instead of enlightening his mind, 
enraged it, and caused his arrest and 



92 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

temporary imprisonment in the Isle of 
Wight. 

For many years the relations between 
Vane and Cromwell were of the most 
intimate character. They invented fa- 
miliar and affectionate names for each 
other, which they used in their corres- 
pondence. It is the verdict of history 
that ^^No man served the Common- 
wealth with more zeal than Vane.^'* 
Lilburne complained that Cromwell 

*Cromwell called Vane "Brother Heron," and Vane 
addressed Cromwell as "Brother Fountain." "No 
man served the Commonwealth with more zeal. Vane 
was elected a member of every Council of State dur- 
ing the period, and his name is always high in the 
list of attendances. He was on every committee of 
importance. When Cromwell invaded Scotland, the 
business of supplying his army with money, provisions 
and re-enforcements was especially trusted to Vane's 
care, and Vane also kept him informed of home and 
foreign politics. ' Let H. Vane know what I write ' 
is Cromwell's message when he was in his greatest 
extremity just before the battle of Dunbar." 

C. H. Firth in ^^ Dictionary of National Biography." 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 93 

was ^^led by the nose by two unworthy, 
covetous earthworms/^ meaning Vane 
and St. John. The question of dis- 
solving the Long Parhament produced 
a lasting breach between them. Vane 
characterized it as ^^ usurpation/' as 
^^ plucking up of liberty by the very 
roots/' as ^introducing an arbitrary 
regal power under the name of Pro- 
tector, by force and the law of the 
sword.''* The exclamation of Crom- 



*" Though the authority of the faithful was the rule 
in their churches, the greater number of them ad- 
mitted that the Divine Will also manifested itself ex- 
traordinarily by a word or an inspired action ; the gift 
of prophecy was to them a reality of their present day. 
It was from this source that Cromwell now sought the 
authority which he would not, and indeed could not, 
any longer demand of the people. To his staff he was 
the General, and that was enough, but to those to whom 
might by itself was not right, he declared that he had 
been called of God, and it was on this ground that he 
justified his actions when he drove the Parliament from 
Westminster, and had himself proclaimed Protector 
of the Republic. Read his speeches, his declarations, 



94 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

well, often quoted as if it was an ex- 
pression of his judgment of Vane, 
^^Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane! 
The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry 
Vane!^^ was little more, probably, than 
a passionate outburst of impatience 
and anger at the opposition of a man 
which he dreaded more than that of 
any other. The words were uttered 
with other frenzied words on the floor 
of the House of Commons, when Crom- 
well, accompanied by an armed force, 
broke up the Long Parliament, striding 
back and forth, and speaking, as Lud- 

his conversations. All remind us of this aspect of his 
mission; he marches before the people of England as 
Gideon did before Israel. * * * 

The genius of this extraordinary man seems to have 
imposed upon the Puritan democracy, for a time, a new 
Divine Right by favor of those very beliefs out of which 
that democracy had arisen, and which had taught it to 
resist Divine Right." 

Charles Borgeaud's " The Rise of Modern Democ- 
racy," pp. 97, 98. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 95 

low says, ^^with so much passion and 
discomposure, as if he had been dis- 
tracted/^ 

When Richard Cromwell rose to 
power, Vane was again returned to 
Parliament, and became inevitably a 
leader. He openly opposed the new 
Protector and boldly denied his right 
of succession. He was excluded in 
1660, and at the restoration of Charles 
II was a second time arrested, and this 
time sent to the fatal Tower. His 
refusal to sanction the execution of 
Charles I did not save him, as it ought 
to have and would have, had the King 
kept his word. An exception was made 
in his case. He was too dangerous a 
man to live under a Stuart dynasty. 
False charges of high treason for com- 
passing the death of the King and 
subverting the ancient form of govern- 



96 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

ment were trumped up against him. 
A form of trial was gone through with, 
in which he was denied counsel, but in 
which he made a masterly defence, 
citing law and precedent, and utterly 
confusing his judges, one of whom 
confessed, ''Though we knew not what 
to say to him, we knew what to do with 
him,'^ and then he was sentenced to 
the block, where he was beheaded June 
14, 1662. The day after the verdict 
was rendered, the King wrote to Lord 
Chancellor Clarendon, the instigator 
of the whole persecution, a letter in 
which he said: ''He is too dangerous a 
man to let live, if we can honestly [he 
might have added or dishonestly] put 
him out of the way.^^ It is stated that 
the roofs of the houses and the windows 
overlooking the path from the Tower 
to the scaffold were crowded with 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 97 

people who gave expression to their 
feehngs in words of tender sympathy 
and grateful appreciation and encour- 
agement. His parting words to his 
wife and children, and his farewell 
address upon the scaffold, where he was 
treated most brutally, are among the 
noblest utterances that ever fell from 
human lips. And so died a man of con- 
spicuous gifts and enlightened views, 
far in advance of his time, with a love 
for his country and its highest interests 
only equalled by his love for his family 
and his Maker, with as brave and true 
a heart as ever throbbed in a human 
breast, a man of whom England was 
not worthy. 

So commanding was his personal 
influence, so extraordinary his ability 
and insight into men and principles, 
and so exalted his character, that his 



98 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

enemy, and the enemy of toleration, 
the royahst Clarendon, (who managed 
to get himself hated alike by Presby- 
terians, Independents, and Papists, and 
finally incurred the displeasure of 
Charles II, was deserted by his friends, 
banished by Parliament, and died in 
exile,) Lord Clarendon acknowledged, 
^^Sir Henry Vane was one of the com- 
missioners, and therefore the others 
need not be named, since he was all in 
any business where others were joined 
with him. He was indeed a man of 
extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit, a 
great understanding, which pierced into 
and discerned the purpose of other men 
with wonderful sagacity, whilst he had 
himself vultum clausum, that no man 
could make guess of what he intended.'' 
Clarendon charges him with being 
shrewd and tricksy in his diplomacy; 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 99 

but such charges came only from the 
Ups of enemies. Robert BailUe, also a 
contemporary, a leading Scotch Pres- 
byterian and member of the Westmin- 
ster Assembly, characterizes him as 
''one of the gravest and ablest of Eng- 
lish statesmen.'' So conspicuous was 
his statesmanship that John Fiske says 
of him: ''With the single exception of 
Cromwell, the greatest statesman of the 
heroic age of Puritanism was un- 
questionably the younger Henry Vane. 
* * * After the death of Pym, in 
1643, Sir Henry Vane, then thirty-one 
years of age, was the foremost man in 
the Long Parliament, and so remained 
as long as that Parhament controlled 
the march of events.'' So enlightened 
was his spirit, and so free from the 
bondage of tradition and circumstance, 
so progressive was he in his thought, 



100 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

and so modern in his conceptions of 
civil government and human rights, 
that Mr. Fiske boldly adds : ^^ Thorough 
republican and enthusiastic lover of 
liberty, he was spiritually akin to 
Jefferson and to Samuel Adams. ^' 

Carlyle, in a portraiture grotesque 
and strangely depreciative, describes 
Vane as ^^a man of light fiber. Grant 
all manner of purity and elevation; 
subtle high discourse; much intel- 
lectual and practical dexterity; there 
is an amiable, devoutly zealous, very 
pretty man; but not a royal man; alas, 
no ! On the whole rather a thin man.^' 
A man who was the acknowledged 
leader in the House of Parliament for 
years in a trying and stormy period, 
who honorably filled the most respon- 
sible official positions in the State, who 
by his consummate diplomacy brought 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 101 

about the ^^ Solemn League and Cove- 
nant/^ who developed the English navy 
until it swept the sea of its mightiest 
foe, and who dared to oppose Crom- 
well, the most formidable personality 
in the seventeenth century, can hardly 
be spoken of as ^^ a man of light fiber, ^' 
^'si very pretty man,'' ^^on the whole 
rather a thin man.'' Such epithets 
appear to be most astonishing misfits. 
On the other hand. Sir James Mack- 
intosh declares that ^^Sir Henry Vane 
was one of the most profound minds 
that ever existed, not inferior, perhaps, 
to Bacon. * * * jjis works dis- 
play astonishing powers. They are re- 
markable as containing the first direct 
assertion of liberty of conscience." Of 
course this last statement is incorrect. 
Few men have lived who have been the 
subjects of such widely differing judg- 



102 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

merits. Swift called him "a danger- 
ous, enthusiastic beast/' while Hallam, 
without prejudice, describes him as 
^^not only incorrupt, but disinterested, 
inflexible in conforming his public con- 
duct to his principles, and averse to 
every sanguinary and oppressive meas- 
ure/' To have opposed Cromwell 
seems to have been, to Cromwell's eu- 
logists. Vane's unpardonable offence, 
and to have blinded their eyes to the 
nobility of his character and the great- 
ness of his service. 

Perhaps the acme of human praise 
was reached by that matchless orator, 
Wendell Phillips, in his famous Phi 
Beta Kappa oration, delivered at Cam- 
bridge, in 1881, in which he said: ^'Sir 
Henry Vane, in my judgment, the 
noblest human being who ever walked 
the streets of yonder city — I do not 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 103 

forget Franklin or Sam Adams, Wash- 
ington or Fayette, Garrison or John 
Brown. But Vane dwells an arrow's 
flight above them all, and his touch 
consecrated the continent to measure- 
less toleration of opinion and entire 
equality of rights. We are told we can 
find in Plato ^ all the intellectual life of 
Europe for two thousand years.' So 
you can find in Vane the pure gold of 
two hundred and fifty years of Ameri- 
can civilization with no particle of its 
dross. Plato would have welcomed 
him to the Academy and Fenelon 
kneeled with him at the altar. He 
made Somers and John Marshall possi- 
ble; like Carnot, he organized victory; 
and Milton pales before him in the 
stainlessness of his record. He stands 
among English statesmen pre-eminent- 
ly the representative, in practice and 



104 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

theory, of serene faith in the safety of 
trusting truth wholly to her own de- 
fence. For other men we walk back- 
ward, and throw over their memories 
the mantle of charity and excuse, say- 
ing reverently, ^Remember the tempta- 
tion and the age.' But Vane's ermine 
has no stain; no act of his needs ex- 
planation or apology; and in thought 
he stands abreast of the age, — like pure 
intellect, he belongs to all time. Car- 
lyle said in years when his words were 
worth heeding, ' Young men, close your 
Byron and open your Goethe.' If my 
counsel had weight in these halls, I 
should say, ^ Young men, close your 
John Winthrop and Washington, your 
Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir 
Harry Vane.' It was the generation 
that knew Vane who gave to our Alma 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 105 

Matei^ for a seal the simple pledge, 
Veritas. ^^ 

It would be interesting to cite numer- 
ous quotations from Vane^s speeches 
and writings, for they are numerous, 
which justify such high praise. Three 
or four brief quotations must suffice. 
The first is taken from a speech made 
on the floor of Parliament during the 
eight days' discussion on the Act of 
Recognition of Richard Cromwell to 
be Protector of the Commonwealth. 
He said, ^^It was then necessary, as the 
first act, to have resort to the founda- 
tion of all just power, and to create and 
establish a free State; to bring the 
people out of bondage, from all pre- 
tence of superiority over them. It 
seemed plain to me that all offices had 
their rise from the people, and that all 
should be accountable to them. If this 



106 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

be monstrous, then it is monstrous to 
be safe and rational, and to bear your 
own good.'' 

In a remarkable treatise, entitled 
^'The People's Case Stated/' Vane de- 
clared: ^^The end of all government, 
being for the good and welfare, and not 
for the destruction, of the ruled, God 
who is the institutor of government, as 
he is pleased to ordain the office of 
governors, intrusting them with power 
to command the just and reasonable 
things which his own law commands, 
that carry their own evidence to com- 
mon reason and sense, at least, that do 
not evidently contradict it, so he grants 
a liberty to the subjects, or those that 
by him are put under the rule, to refuse 
all such commands as are contrary to 
his law, or to the judgment of common 
reason and sense, whose trial he allows. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 107 

by way of assent or dissent, before the 
commands of the ruler shall be binding 
or put in execution; and this in a co- 
ordinacy of power with just government 
and as the due balance thereof; for 
the original impressions of just laws 
are in man's nature and very consti- 
tution of being. * * * Sovereign 
power then comes from God, as its 
proper root, but the restraint or en- 
largement of it, in its execution over 
such a body, is founded in the common 
consent of that body/' 

Again he says, "All just executive 
power arose from the free will and gift 
of the people, who might either keep 
the power in themselves, or give up 
their subjection into the hands and will 
of another, if they shall judge that 
thereby they shall better answer the 



108 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

end of government, to wit, the welfare 
and safety of the whole/' 

Such declarations anticipated by two 
hundred years the inspired utterance 
of President Lincoln: ^^ A government 
of the people, by the people and for the 
people/' 

A final quotation is taken from ^^A 
Retired Man's Meditations/' and ex- 
presses Vane's views especially and 
clearly upon the subject of religious 
liberty. ^'Magistracy is not to intrude 
itself into the office and proper con- 
cerns of Christ's inward government 
and rule in the conscience; but it is to 
content itself with the outward man, 
and to intermeddle with the concerns 
thereof in reference to the converse 
which man ought to have with man, 
upon the grounds of natural just and 
right in things appertaining to this 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 109 

life/^ — language inspired by the spirit 
and faith which drew up the immortal 
compact signed by the thirteen settlers 
of the Providence Plantations, who 
agreed ^^to submit themselves to all 
such orders or agreements as shall be 
made for the public good of the body 
only in civil things J ^ 

All through Vane's public career, by 
voice and pen, in Parliament and out of 
Parliament, from beginning to end, in 
America and in England, from his 
discussion with John Winthrop when 
he announced principles which Win- 
throp had been compelled before to 
hear from the lips of Roger Williams, 
to his final utterance on the scaffold, 
he pleaded for the rights and liberties 
of all men, for liberty regulated by law, 
for religious toleration, and for the 
recognition of the sovereignty of the 



110 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

people. Under God in Vane's pro- 
gramme of human government the 
people were supreme and the conscience 
was to be forever free. 

He died wdthout seeing the realization 
of his splendid vision. But his service 
and sacrifice helped to make it possible 
for an English poet of a subsequent 
generation to sing — 

" Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine, 
'Tis Liberty that crowns Brittania's isle, 
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak moun- 
tains smile." 

Indeed, as Peter Bayne asserts, 
^^Constitutional logic has not made a 
single step in advance of the funda- 
mental positions of Vane. No possible 
political development can outrun the 
sovereignty of the people, represented 
in an assembly appointed by the 



SIR HENRY VAXE, JR. Ill 

people's intelligent will. This was his 
essential principle/^ 

And this man, statesman, publicist, 
prophet, patriot, martyr, whose claims 
^^wdll yet be more fully recognized in 
England'' in the behef of his Enghsh 
biographer, Dr. Ireland, was by spirit- 
ual sympathy and conviction, by vol- 
untary choice, by generous words and 
influential deeds, the friend of Roger 
AYilhams and Rhode Island. 

In June, 1643, Roger Williams was 
sent to England to procure a charter 
for the Colony. He arrived near the 
beginning of the Ci\dl War, which was 
convulsing the nation. Naturally he 
sought out Sir Henry Vane, whom 
Oscar Straus calls his ''intimate friend" 
and ''distinguished coadjutor in the 
cause of religious hberty." The pre- 
\dous acquaintance in New England 



112 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

proved most fortunate. Vane received 
him cordially, and invited him to be 
his guest in London and in Lincoln- 
shire. His friendship and aid crowned 
his mission with success. A Board of 
Commissioners for the Colonies had 
been appointed by Parliament, of which 
Board Vane was an influential member. 
By him Roger Williams was introduced 
to the Board, and his request advo- 
cated. It was probably under Vane's 
hospitable roof on this visit that Wil- 
liams wrote his famous treatise, entitled 
''The Bloody Tenet of Persecution,'' in 
answer to a letter of John Cotton, a 
treatise which he dedicated to Parlia- 
ment, and in which he discussed the 
great principles of religious liberty. In 
the preface he refers to ''a heavenly 
speech," which he heard from one of the 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 113 

members of Parliament, who was un- 
doubtedly Vane. 

Often in those long evenings when 
they were waiting anxiously for news 
from the contending armies, Williams 
and Vane must have discussed to- 
gether the principles for the triumph 
of which they had both pledged their 
fortunes and their lives. As soon as 
the chapters of the book were com- 
pleted, one by one, Williams must have 
read them to Vane, and found in 
him a most attentive and sympathetic 
listener. Gratefully recognizing the 
generous assistance of his friend, Wil- 
liams returned from his successful expe- 
dition, reaching Boston, September 17, 
1644, armed not only with the desired 
charter, but with a communication to 
the Massachusetts authorities request- 
ing them to permit him to pass through 



114 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

their territory, a thing which they had 
refused to do on his way out. This 
was signed by men prominent in the 
EngHsh Parhament, and undoubtedly 
Vane had a wilhng hand in getting it 
up. It began, as follows: 

^^Our much honored friends: 

'^ Taking notice some of us of long 
time of Mr. Roger Williams^ good af- 
fections and conscience, and of his suf- 
ferings by our common enemy and op- 
pressors of God^s people, the prelates, 
as also of his great industry and travels 
in his printed Indian labors in your 
parts (the like whereof we have not 
seen extant from any part of America) , 
[Williams had pubHshed while in Eu- 
rope his ' Key to the Indian Language '], 
and in which respect it hath pleased 
both Houses of Parliament to grant unto 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 115 

him, and friends with him, a free and 
absolute charter of civil government 
for those parts of his abode/ ^ etc., etc. 
The Massachusetts authorities granted 
the request reluctantly, not daring to 
refuse, at the same time justifying their 
previous treatment of Williams. This 
^^free and absolute charter of civil gov- 
ernment,'^ as it was called, was wholly 
unique in colonial history. Previous 
charters had been granted by favor of 
the Crown with only limited provisions 
for liberty of independent action. This 
charter was issued by the Long Par- 
liament, which had no occasion to 
protect the rights and prerogatives of 
the King, but granted to ^'the well 
affected and industrious inhabitants'' 
of this Colony full powers and authority 
to govern themselves. ^^To the Long 
Parliament," says Bancroft, ^'and es- 



116 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

pecially to Sir Henry Vane, Rhode 
Island owes its existence as a political 
State/ ^ or rather he should have said, its 
recognition as a free political State, for 
it had already existed without recogni- 
tion for seven years. It must have 
been a peculiar satisfaction to Vane to 
assist in giving equal colonial standing 
to a State founded upon principles 
which he had failed to get incorporated 
in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay. 
^'Mr. Williams's return to Provi- 
dence, '' says Knowles, ^'was greeted by 
a voluntary expression of the attach- 
ment and gratitude of its inhabitants, 
which is one of the most satisfactory 
testimonies to his character. They met 
him at Seekonk, with fourteen canoes, 
and carried him across the river to 
Providence.'' Such an expression of 
grateful appreciation of his service to 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 117 

the Colony must have been very grati- 
fying to Roger WilHams. So far as 
is known there was but one heart 
capable of hatred and jealousy at such 
a time. Richard Scott, once a friend, 
later an enemy, recorded the incident, 
and added, ^^The man being hemmed 
in, in the midst of the canoes, was so 
elevated and transported out of him- 
self, that I was condemned in myself 
that amongst the rest, I had been an 
instrument to set him up in his pride 
and folly. ^' 

Again in 1652, Roger Williams visited 
England at the request of the Colony to 
secure a confirmation of the charter, 
and an interpretation which should 
preserve their liberties, and protect 
them against the threatened encroach- 
ments of their neighbors. In this visit 



118 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

he was accompanied by Dr. John 
Clarke, of Newport, who also went by 
the request of his neighbors to secure, 
if possible, a revocation of Coddington^s 
ambitious and autocratic commission, 
which he had secretly obtained. It is 
more than probable that during the 
intervening eight years, since Wil- 
liams ^s first visit, a frequent corre- 
spondence had been carried on between 
these leaders in the cause of religious 
liberty, each being eager to know how 
the battle was going on the other side 
of the world. At any rate, the friend- 
ship was unbroken, even cemented by 
their continued devotion to the com- 
mon cause. Many things had hap- 
pened in England, and many changes 
had come about, which it is not nec- 
essary to relate. But the heart of Vane 
was unchanged, and his hand was 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 119 

pledged to his aid. He welcomed him 
again to his home in London, and to his 
country seat at Belleau. Vane occu- 
pied the responsible position at the 
head of the navy (though he was soon 
to be set aside), and the great sea- war 
with the Dutch was in progress. But 
he had time to aid his friends from the 
new world, where ^Hhe lively experi- 
ment^^ was being tried, and tested as 
well. Again he must have conversed 
often with his former guest about the 
fresh rejoinder to Cotton which he was 
putting through the press under the 
title, ^^The Bloody Tenet yet more 
Bloody, ^^ and probably with his new 
guest. Dr. Clarke, who was also pub- 
lishing a book entitled ^'111 News from 
New England or a Narrative of New 
England^s Persecutions, '^ which was of 
the nature of a personal experience 



120 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

which he had had in Massachusetts. 
(It may be said, by way of parenthesis, 
that WiUiams pubhshed at this time 
another, purely rehgious book, called 
^^Experiments of Spiritual Life," which 
Lady Vane permitted him to dedicate 
to herself.) But amid all this literary 
work the main object of their visit was 
kept ever in mind. 

Through the mediation of Vane a 
hearing was at length appointed with 
the Council of State to whom a petition 
was presented, who, on April 8, 1652, 
referred it to the Committee on For- 
eign Affairs. It met with serious oppo- 
sition, but at last through the powerful 
influence of one whose name can easily 
be surmised, the Council granted an 
order to vacate Mr. Coddington's com- 
mission, and to confirm the former 
charter. But let Roger Williams re- 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 121 

port the struggle in his own words^ and 
give the credit to whom it is due. In 
a letter written from Sir Henry Vane's, 
at Belleau, in Lincolnshire, under date 
of April 1st, 1653, twelve months after 
the petition was presented, to his ^^dear 
and loving friends and neighbors of 
Providence and Warwick, '' he wrote: 
^^Our noble friend. Sir Henry Vane, 
having the navy of England mostly 
depending on his care, and going down 
to the navy at Portsmouth, I was 
invited by them both to accompany 
his lady to Lincolnshire. ... I 
hope it may have pleased the Most 
High Lord of sea and land to bring 
Capt. Ch-rst-n's ship and dear Mr. 
Dyre* unto you, and with him the 

*This was William Dyer, who was one of the nine- 
teen signers of the religio-civic compact (more religio 
than civic) of the Aquidneck settlers, March 7, 1638. 
8 



122 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

Councirs letters, which answer the 
petition (that is, which are the answer 
to the petition) Sir Henry Vane and 
myself drew up, and the Council by 
Sir Henry's mediation, granted us, for 
the confirmation of the charter, until 
the determination of the controversy. 
This determination, you may please to 
understand, is hindered by two main 
obstructions. '^ 

The two obstructions he explained 
were, first, the absorbing interest of the 

William Coddington and John Clarke were the first 
two signers. Dyer's signature was the eleventh. He 
was evidently a man of considerable prominence, and 
held official positions at Aquidneck, and later under 
the united colonies, for many years. It is supposed 
that he went to England with Williams and Clarke, 
and after the action of the Council of State annulling 
Coddington 's commission and authorizing the colonies 
to unite under the old charter of 1643, was commis- 
sioned by them to return to this country and bring the 
joyful news. He was the husband of Mary Dyer, the 
Quaker martyr, who was hanged on Boston Common, 
June 1, 1660. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 123 

war with the Dutch, which he said 
^^ makes England and Holland and the 
nations tremble/' and secondly, the 
opposition of Winslow and Hopkins, 
who represented the New England 
Confederacy, and the friends in Par- 
liament whom they had gained to their 
side, and of ^^all the priests, '^ as he calls 
them, ^^both Presbyterian and Inde- 
pendent/' Then he adds with em- 
phasis and gratitude, ^^ Under God, the 
sheet-anchor of our ship is Sir Henry, 
who will do as the eye of God leads 
him." The whole business seemed to 
l3e in Vane's hands. He and Williams 
drew up the petition. He secured its 
presentation before the Council of 
State, and labored for its favorable 
consideration. It was by his inter- 
cession that the action was taken, and 
the combined forces of the opposition 



124 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

were defeated. Williams had not a 
word of commendation for any one 
else. Vane was ^Hhe sheet anchor of 
their ship/' which saved their hopes 
from failure and wreck. To him and 
to his friendship for Roger Williams 
and devotion to the principles which 
he and Clarke represented, Rhode 
Island is indebted for the confirmation 
of its original charter. This was, in- 
deed, a preliminary step, until a final 
adjudication could be reached; but it 
was an immensely important step. It 
preserved the integrity of Rhode Island 
for ten years, and prepared the way for 
the charter of 1663. That charter 
Vane did not live to see. Indeed,, 
Cromwell dissolved the Rump Par- 
liament that very year (1653), and 
Vane was set aside and remained in 
retirement for several years, having 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 125 

but a brief period of public service 
after that, before his beheading. 

Wilhams, however, maintained 
friendly relations with Cromwell. He 
remained in England until the Pro- 
tectorate was established, and then 
having obtained assurances from Crom- 
well that the interests of Rhode Island 
would be cared for, he left the business 
remaining to be attended to in the 
hands of his friend. Dr. Clarke, who 
remained in England on private busi- 
ness, and also as the agent of the 
Colony, and responded to an urgent 
summons to return home on account 
of the unseemly divisions and disorder 
which prevailed among the Colonists. 

No heart was more grieved and dis- 
tressed by the reported condition in 
the Providence Colony than the heart 
of Vane, who looked upon it as the 



126 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

fullest illustration of his cherished prin- 
ciples on either side of the Atlantic. 
Upon its success there would be hope 
for the world. Upon its failure all 
would be lost. As an expression of his 
deep and abiding interest in the pros- 
perity of Rhode Island and the success 
of its experiment, an interest so deep 
that his own happiness and life seemed 
to be bound up in it, he made Roger 
Williams the bearer of a letter to the 
citizens, which was filled with affec- 
tionate rebukes and the most earnest 
appeals that for their own safety and 
for the sake of the sacred cause which 
they represented, in which was in- 
volved the cause of liberty, of humanity 
and the kingdom of God on earth, they 
would cease from thejjr bickerings and 
strife, and follow the things that make 
for peace. 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 127 

^^How is it that there are such divis- 
ions amongst you? Such headiness, 
tumults, disorders, injustice? The 
noise echoes into the ears of all, as well 
friends as enemies, by every return 
of ships from those parts. Is not the 
fear and awe of God amongst you to 
restrain? Is not the love of Christ in 
you, to fill you with yearning bowels, 
one towards another, and constrain you 
not to live to yourselves, but to Him 
that died for you, yea, that is risen 
again? Are there no wise men amongst 
you? No public self-denying spirits, 
that at least, upon the grounds of 
public safety, equity and prudence, can 
find out some way or means of union 
and reconciliation for you amongst 
yourselves, before you became a prey 
to common enemies, especially since 
this State by the last letter from the 



128 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

Council of State, gave you your free- 
dom, as supposing a better use would 
have been made of it than there hath 
been? Surely, when kind and simple 
remedies are applied and are ineffect- 
ual, it speaks loud and broadly the 
high and dangerous distempers of such 
a body, as if the wounds were incura- 
ble. But I hope better things from 
you, though I thus speak, and should 
be apt to think, that by commissioners 
agreed on and appointed on all parts, 
and on behalf of all interests, in a 
general meeting, such a union and 
common satisfaction might arise, as, 
through God's blessing, might put a 
stop to your growing breaches and 
distractions, silence your enemies, en- 
courage your friends, honor the name 
of God (which of late hath been much 
blasphemed, by reason of you), and in 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 129 

particular, refresh and revive the sad 
heart of him, who mourns over your 
present evils, as being your affectionate 
friend, to serve you in the Lord. 
Belleau, the 8th of February, 1653-4. 

H. Vane.^^ 

This letter, couched in the frankest, 
most affectionate and fatherly lan- 
guage, produced a favorable effect, and 
Roger Williams was requested to pre- 
pare and forward a reply, in which due 
acknowledgment was made of his ^^ con- 
stant loving kindness and favor from 
the first beginning of this Providence 
Colony." While, therefore, Sir Henry 
Vane may not be called, in the strict 
sense of the title, ^^one of the founders 
of Rhode Island" (there is no evidence 
that he ever set foot on its soil), he 
was certainly its chief benefactor, giv- 



130 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

ing to it the great influence of his strong 
personahty, his high social rank, his 
official position, and his active sym- 
pathy. To him Rhode Island owes a 
lasting debt of gratitude for its firm 
establishment as a Commonwealth, and 
for the preservation of its liberties. 
Boston, which never lost faith in its 
^^boy Governor '^ (though the rest of 
the Colony, to its shame be it said, 
refused to re-elect him), and honored 
him in his departure with every dem- 
onstration of appreciation and respect, 
has placed just within the entrance of 
its public library a statue of Vane of 
heroic size, by MacMonnies. Its 
plumed hat, and hanging sw^ord, and 
gay attire show little of the Puritan, 
but more of the Cavalier, whose pro- 
priety is supposed to be justified on 
account of his family connection; yet 



SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 131 

it is a fitting, though tardy, acknowl- 
edgment of his heroic leadership in the 
battle of human freedom. 

Some memorial in the city of Provi- 
dence, in enduring bronze or imper- 
ishable granite, would be a most fit- 
ting tribute to his memory, and his 
great service in Rhode Island's infancy 
and time of need. And upon that 
monument no more appropriate in- 
scription could be placed than the im- 
mortal tribute of his intimate friend 
and co-laborer in the cause of hu- 
man freedom, the poet Milton, with 
whom, he being Secretary of the Coun- 
cil, Williams, when on his second visit 
to England, lived in intimate rela- 
tions, those of teacher and pupil as 
well as those of friends of a noble cause. 
In this manner would be associated in 
this birth-place of civil and religious 



132 SIR HENRY VANE, JR. 

liberty that triumvirate of great names 
— Roger Williams, John Milton, and 
Sir Henry Vane. 

■" Vane, young in years, but sage in counsel old. 
Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repelled 

The fierce Epirot and the African bold, — 

Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 

The drift of hollow states hard to be spell'd. 
Then to advise how War may best, upheld, 

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold. 
In all her equipage : besides to know 
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means. 

What severs each, thou hast learn 'd, which few have 
done: 
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe : 
Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans 

In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." 



APPENDIX A. 

John Cotton and Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 

In the inscription prepared for the recumbent 
marble statue of John Cotton in the First 
Church in Boston, he is described as the 
''Preceptor and Friend of Vane." Edwin D. 
Mead, in a paper read before the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, at its June meeting in 1907, 
and pubhshed in ''Proceedings, 1907, 1908," 
referring to one of Cotton's pubhcations (" Way 
of the Churches of Christ in New England"), 
speaks of the "influence of its cardinal views 
upon Vane, who, during his stay in Boston, 
lived for a time under Cotton's roof." It 
should be stated that Dr. Charles Borgeaud, to 
whose "Rise of Modern Democracy in Eng- 
land and New E^gland," Mr. Mead refers for 
authority for this statement, makes no allusion 
whatever to any influence, real or supposed, 
which Cotton had on Vane. 



134 APPENDIX A. 

We know Vane and his views of religious 
liberty at the time when he was Cotton's guest, 
which not only led him to befriend and plead 
for the rights of Mrs. Hutchinson, but found 
expression in his dispute with Gov. Winthrop, 
and his earnest protests against all laws of 
exclusion or persecution because of religious 
differences, as well as in his whole subsequent 
career; and we know Cotton and his views, 
which found expression in his numerous pub- 
lications, as well as in his well-known conduct. 
Though Cotton was twenty-seven years older 
than his guest. Vane far outstripped his host 
in his clearly defined principles of the rights 
of conscience, and was able to give lessons to 
the teacher of the Boston Church. This he 
undoubtedly did, though the Puritan teacher 
was unwiUing or too old to learn them. 

It was Cotton who boldly affirmed that 
''toleration made the world anti-Christian," 
and should therefore be religiously avoided and 
prohibited, who approved the banishment of 
Roger Williams, saying afterwards with a 
heartless facetiousness that "it was not banish- 



APPENDIX A. 



135 



merit, but enlargement;" who carried on the 
famous pubUshed controversy with WilUams, 
in which he showed that he had never learned 
the alphabet of reUgious liberty, much less 
been a preceptor in that branch of knowledge ; 
and who inhumanly justified the persecution of 
the Rhode Island worthies, Clarke and Holmes, 
in the famous reply which he and Wilson sent 
to Saltonstall. Moreover, his conception of 
democracy appears in the following language: 

^' Democracy I do not conceyve that ever 
God did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther 
for church or commonwealth. ... As for 
monarchy and aristocracy, they are both of 
them clearly approved, and directed in Scrip- 
ture, yet so as God referreth the sovereigntie to 
himself, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as 
the best form of government." 

It should be added that after Vane returned 
to England, Cotton, who had stood with him in 
the defence of Mrs. Hutchinson, went back on 
himself, publicly professed his penitence with 
many tears, declared that he had been made 
''her stalking horse," an'd not only abandoned 



136 APPENDIX A. 

the poor woman to her enemies, but zealously 
engaged in confuting her ''heresies/' and him- 
self delivered the verdict of the church, and 
''pronounced the sentence of admonition with 
great solemnity, and with much zeal and de- 
testation of her errors and pride of spirit." 
John S. Barry ("History of Massachusetts, 
First Period," p. 259) says: 

"This was the unkindest cut of all! This 
blow staggered her ! And the unhappy woman, 
baited and worried by her clerical tormentors, 
"pumped and sifted to get something against 
her," stigmatized as "the American Jezebel," 
cast out of the church, spit upon, and defied as 
it were, scarce knew what she said; and faihng 
to give satisfaction to those whom nothing 
probably would now have made lenient, was 
excommunicated in due form." 

Brooks Adams, commenting on this distress- 
ing affair ("The Emancipation of Massachu- 
setts," p. 60), says: 

" Vane sailed early in August, and his depar- 
ture cleared the last barrier from the way of 
vengeance. . . . Cotton hastened to make 



APPENDIX A. 137 

his peace by a submission, which Rev. Mr. 
Hubbard of Ipswich describes with uncon- 
scious cynicism: ''If he were not convinced, 
yet he was persuaded to an amicable com- 
pUance with the other ministers; . . . for 
although it was thought he did still retain 
his own sense and enjoy his own apprehension 
in all or most of the things then controverted 
(as is manifest by some expressions of his since 
that time published) yet by that means did 
that reverend and worthy minister of the 
gospel recover his former splendour through- 
out New England." 

S. G. Arnold, (''History of Rhode Island," 
Vol. I., p. 68), explains Cotton's conduct as 
follows: — "When the powerful influence of 
Vane was thus withdrawn, Cotton made good 
his reconciliation with his offended colleagues, 
and still appeared as the devoted servant of the 
people." 

It looks very much as if Cotton's momentary 
liberalism in joining hands with Vane in the 
defence of Mrs. Hutchinson was the effect of the 
young Governor's presence and influence upon 



138 APPENDIX A. 

him, and that after Vane had departed he fell 
back in a most humiliating manner, and with 
ostentatious penitence, which must be regretted 
by every one, into his former narrowness and 
an intenser opposition to the principle of 
religious liberty. The facts do not appear to 
justify the claim that Cotton was in any sense 
the preceptor of Vane. In those days, and in 
that community, the younger man, who was of 
noble family and was generally welcomed with 
enthusiasm by the Massachusetts Colonists on 
his arrival, and in a few short months was elected 
Governor of the colony, who held advanced 
views, and possessed withal a striking person- 
ality, would inevitably be listened to with 
respect, and would easily be exalted, in spite 
of difference in age, to the preceptor's chair. 

The paragraphs above appeared as an article 
in '^The Nation" April 8, 1909. Mr. Mead in 
his courteous explanation in ''The Nation" 
May 13, said, ''With Mr. King's observations 
upon the relative merits and influence of Cotton 
and Vane as concerning toleration, I should not 
be disposed to take issue." Yet in the matter 



APPENDIX A. 139 

of church pohty, of Independency in church 
government, a very much less important matter, 
he is still of the opinion that Cotton's relation 
to Vane warrants his being called his '' pre- 
ceptor." He refers to J. Wingate Thornton 
^nd Dr. James K. Hosmer in confirmation of 
his opinion. A careful study of the religious 
conditions in New England and Old England 
at that time, and a proper consideration of the 
meaning and application of Independency, as 
well as of the known views of both Cotton and 
Vane, will show how little basis there is for the 
opinion that Vane was influenced by Cotton 
even in this minor matter. 

J. Wingate Thornton (''The Historical 
Relation of New England to the English 
Commonwealth"), seeking to establish the 
influential relation of the Massachusetts Puri- 
tans to the leaders of the English Common- 
wealth, thinks that Vane was a principal 
channel of that influence, and goes so far as to 
assert that "Vane was trained in Cotton's 
study." Dr. J. K. Hosmer (" Life of Sir Henry 
Vane") says, "This is scarcely too much to 



140 APPENDIX A. 

say," and gives a beautiful imaginary picture of 
the relation of the two men, when Vane was 
Cotton's guest. No evidence of this training 
and education is brought forward. It seems 
to be a pure conjecture, without any sub- 
stantial proof, from the fact of Vane's residence 
in Cotton's home. From what we know of the 
two men, the probabilities are all against the 
reasonableness of the conjecture. We know 
that Vane could teach Cotton on the subject of 
religious toleration; why not also on the sub- 
ject of church independency and polity, of 
true democracy in church government? In 
those days the two subjects seemed to be in- 
dissolubly connected. 

We have no means of knowing how definite 
and fully ripened Vane's views were when he 
arrived in Boston. Edwin D. Mead says: 
''When he came to Boston to live with John 
Cotton he was not an Independent, and when 
he went back to England he was. The in- 
ference would seem to be simple," that is, as to 
the fact of his training under Cotton. Perhaps 
not so simple, after all. It might be replied: 



APPENDIX A. 141 

neither was Cotton an Independent when 
Vane came to Boston, and more than that, he 
never became one, and was hardly quahfied to 
be a sympathetic and successful teacher. So 
far as we have any knowledge, Vane was an 
Independent in sentiment when he reached New 
England, and his experience here simply con- 
firmed him in views already accepted, instead 
of teaching him new and broader views which 
his supposed teacher never accepted. His 
'draining in Cotton's study" was of the kind 
that establishes the views which are not 
taught; that is, a teaching by repulsion. It 
is made certain by abundant testimony that 
Vane was an outspoken and fully ripened 
Independent at once when he returned to 
England. He was elected to Parliament in 
1640, and immediately, says Dr. Ireland, "the 
leaders of the Independent party in the Com- 
mons were the younger Vane and Oliver St. 
John." Baillie, speaking of the Parliamentary 
discussions at that time, praises naturally the 
orators on the Presbyterian side, that is, those 
who declaimed in defence of the narrow polity 



142 APPENDIX A. 

and intolerance of the Presbyterians, and adds 
significantly, ''Yet Henry Vane went on vio- 
lently," on the side of the Independents. 

It ought not to be necessary to repeat what 
is so well known and universally acknowledged,, 
that Independency in England and Puritanism 
in Massachusetts Bay were not synonymous. 
They did not stand for the same things, either 
in the matter of civil or ecclesiastical polity. 
Dr. Hosmer says: 

" The first hint at Independency is perhaps 
found in the writings of Zwingle. [A more 
accurate statement would be in the publica- 
tions of the Swiss Anabaptists in the sixteenth 
century.] It first took form in England, how- 
ever; then developed fully in America. [It 
should be said it was many years in developing.} 
While Prelacy was dominant in the time of 
Elizabeth and James, little congregations of 
Brownists or Separatists appeared here and 
there in England, some of which went to Hol- 
land." 

As a proof of the lack of identity between 
Massachusetts Puritanism and EngUsh In- 



APPENDIX A. 143 

dependency it will be sufficient to quote Dr. 
Henry M. Dexter, a recognized authority, who 
says ('' Congregationalism as Seen in its Litera- 
ture," p. 463): 

''The early Congregationalism of this country 
was Barrowism and not Brownism — a Con- 
gregationalized Presbyterianism, or a Presby- 
terianized Congregationalism — which had its 
roots in the one system and its branches in the 
other." 

Robert Browne, who broke with the Church 
of England about the year 1580, enunciated 
his new views, and founded an Independent 
Church at Norwich, was, it is claimed, the 
founder of Independency or Congregationalism. 
''This system," according to Dr. Dexter (p. 114) 
that is, Brownism or Separatism, "proved to 
have vitality enough and enough of adaptation 
to the demands of human life, to resume and 
reassert its interrupted sway," [Browne and 
his little church soon migrated across the chan- 
nel to Middleberg. Not long after, he returned 
to England, repudiated his new views, and 
became again a clergyman in the Church of 



144 APPENDIX A. 

England, for the rest of his days. His views, 
however, found other advocates] ''so that 
although the thought may not be in their 
minds, the Independents of England and the 
Congregationalists of America, more nearly 
than from any other, are to-day in lineal de- 
scent from that little Norwich church of two 
hundred and ninety-six years ago." Dr. 
Dexter means, of course, the Congregationalists 
of to-day, and not the Presbyterianized Con- 
gregationalists of the first half of the seven- 
teenth century in Boston. 

This important distinction between the 
English Independents of that period and 
American Independents (?) is clearly brought 
out by J. A. Doyle {" The Puritan Colonies/' 
1,127): 

" To such an one as Vane life in New England 
must have been a continuous disenchantment. 
[This is a plain recognition of Vane's advanced 
position in Independency before he came to 
New England.] The more cultivated men 
among the political reformers valued and 
sympathized with Puritanism. But they 



APPENDIX A. 145 

valued it in its moral and political aspects, as 
a means for the regeneration of the individual, 
as an ally against corrupt courtiers and arbi- 
trary statesmen, rather than a system of theo- 
logical dogma. To them the Independent 
system meant one under which self-constituted 
societies, freely brought together by common 
beliefs and aspirations, might work out the 
problems of spiritual life. In New England 
it meant the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical 
public opinion. Moreover, to men familiar 
with those theories of human rights which were 
now asserting themselves, the ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction of Massachusetts must have seemed 
a violation of all sound principles." 

The same fundamental distinction between 
Brownism or English Independency and so- 
called American Independency is recognized 
and set forth as follows by Prof. Herbert L. 
Osgood ("American Colonies in the Seventeenth 
Century"): 

" Not only was it [religious freedom] a funda- 
mental tenet of Robert Browne, but it lay at 
the basis of true Independency. The Puritans 



146 APPENDIX A. 

of Massachusetts were in theory Independents^ 
and had they remained true to the principle 
upon which their movement began, they must 
have welcomed the doctrine with which the 
name of Roger Williams is identified. But 
largely under the pressure of political necessity, 
the Massachusetts leaders had from the be- 
ginning committed themselves to a limited and 
Presbyterianized Independency. In order to 
secure unity and strength they had sacrificed 
freedom (I, 235). 

Finally, the tendency toward democracy in 
ecclesiastical and civil government was counter- 
balanced by the necessity for the maintenance 
of order and authority. The more aristocratic 
phases of this system were reproduced by the 
Presbyterians of England and Scotland; the 
more democratic by Robert Browne and his 
followers, the Separatists. An intermediate 
position came to be occupied by the Puritans 
of New England (I, 203)." 

In 1634, the year after Cotton's arrival in 
Boston, he issued a publication entitled *' Ques- 
tions and Answers Upon Church Government."' 



APPENDIX A. 147 

This publication was re-issued in 1643. In it 
Cotton maintained, according to Dr. Dexter 
(p. 424), ''that Christ has committed govern- 
ment partly to the body of the church, but prin- 
cipally to the Presbytery of Ruling Elders." 
The system of ruling elders was out and out 
Presbyterianism to that extent. Dr. Dexter 
declares (p. 699): 

'' Our historic original New England Con- 
gregationalism was a purely Presbyterian 
polity, only that it was applied to, and stopped 
short with, the local assembly." 

The system was more and more departed 
from as the years went by, to the regret of 
prominent leaders. John Wise writing in 1717 
{"A Vindication of the Government of N. E. 
Churches, ^^ p. 88), ''pleads for the old New 
England way, as he understands and advocates 
it, with Ruling Elders holding their place." 

Of "T/ie Way of the Churches of Christ in 
New England,'' Cotton's publication, which Mr. 
Mead thinks had influence on Vane, Dr. Dexter 
says (p. 434) : "In this I think of nothing which 
requires mention as adding to, or especially 



148 APPENDIX A. 

modifying, the views already propounded." 
The Cambridge Platform distinctly declared, 
^'The term Independent we approve not." 
Hugh Peters said (1643), ''We are much 
charged with what we own not, viz.: In- 
dependency." There were undoubtedly dif- 
ferent shades of belief among the churches. It 
was a time of transition. Some of the leaders, 
including Cotton, were charged with incon- 
sistent utterances. It is doubtful if among the 
early New England churches of ''the standing 
order" there were any Independent churches 
in the English sense or any Congregational 
Churches in the modern sense anywhere, ex- 
cepting in the Plymouth Colony. In its ripest 
.stage for many years it was, to repeat Dr. 
Dexter's accurate phrase, " Presbyterianized 
CongregationaUsm." Dr. E. H. Bjdngton says 
(" The Puritan in England and New England," 
p. 108): 

" The present Congregationalism is much 
nearer that of the Plymouth Church than that 
of the Cambridge Platform." 

Under that Platform churches bearing the 



APPENDIX A. 149 

name Presbyterian, though of the Congrega- 
tional sort, were organized for a century and 
more. An illustration is found in Providence, 
R. I. The First Congregational (now Unita- 
rian) Society in Providence, organized as late 
as 1720, was called Presbyterian. In a dis- 
course on the history of the church, delivered 
in 1836, by the pastor. Rev. Edward B. Hall, 
occur these words: 

'' The first name given to this Society, Pres- 
byterian, I know not how to explain. It is 
found in the earliest records and deeds, and 
was long the popular, if not the only, name. 
* * * It is still better known probably, at 
least to those in this vicinity, than any other 
name." 

The land on which the first house of worship 
was erected, was conveyed in 1723 to '' Feoffees 
in trust for the Presbyterian or Congregational 
Society in Providence." The terms were em- 
ployed interchangeably or as mutually de- 
scriptive. This was true of the two succeeding 
Congregational churches in Providence. 

No fact in history is more incontrovertible 



150 APPENDIX A. 

than that the Independency of England was 
more advanced, and more consistent than the 
Congregationahsm of New England. The ex- 
tent of its diffusion is often underestimated. 
The Brownists or Separatists, and the Baptists 
were in harmony in their views of religious 
liberty and of church polity. They were all 
Independents or Congregationahsts. The In- 
dependents did not become a political party 
until near the close of the first third of the 
seventeenth century. But they had long been 
a, positive and increasing force to be reckoned 
with among the religious forces of the English 
people, and were so active and aggressive, in 
spite of bitter and persistent persecution, that 
they had not a little to do in bringing about the 
English Commonwealth. They were strong 
enough and numerous enough to become the 
dominant party in England under Cromwell. 
Fifty-five years had passed between Browne's 
movement at Norwich, and the emigration of 
Vane, and Browne's priority is disputed by 
some Baptist historians. A half-century and 
more is ample time for a harvest, when the 



APPENDIX A. 151 

soil is ready. It is stated by an opponent 
that the presses of the Baptists ''did groan 
and sweat under the load of their pub- 
lications," which scattered everywhere their 
leavening influence. Green, in his ''Short 
History of the English People," calls attention 
to the fact that "at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century scores of Independent con- 
gregations existed in England and Wales." 
Thomas Erskine May {"Constitutional History 
of England" II, 296) says: "Before the 
death of EHzabeth (1603) the Independents 
had spread themselves widely through the 
country." Sir Walter Raleigh declared in 
Parliament, before the close of the sixteenth 
century, that "he was afraid that there were 
nearly twenty thousand Brownists in Eng- 
land." Evidently "the New England Way," 
so-called, was not a new way in old England, 
unless its modification made it such. Vane 
had a thousand better qualified teachers at 
home, and it is safe to say, had learned his 
lesson well, so that he had Uttle need of Cotton 
as "preceptor" during his brief experience in 



152 APPENDIX A. 

Boston. This will easily account for the fact 
which Mr. Mead, who nevertheless advocates 
the claim for Cotton, acknowledges, when he 
says: ''It is also certain that the learner ad- 
vanced far beyond the [supposed] teacher." 
At any rate, we must accept Cotton's own 
testimony as to the position he held, viz.: 
''Democrary I do not conceyve that ever God 
did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther for 
church or commonwealth." Dr. Hosmer con- 
fesses that '' For democracy in church or state 
Cotton never had a kind word." 



APPENDIX B. 

Contemporary Appreciations of Vane. 

''In fine, seeing himself on all hands in an 
evil case, he [Vane] resolved for New England. 
In order to this, striking in with some Non- 
Conformists which intended that way, his 
honorable birth, long hair and other circum- 
stances of his person rendered his fellow- 
travellers jealous of him, as a spy to betray 
their Hberty, rather than in any way like to 
advantage their design. But he that they 
thought at first to have too little of Christ for 
their company, did soon after appear to have 
too much for them. For he had not been long 
in New England, but he ripened into more 
knowledge and experience of Christ than the 
churches there could bear the testimony of. 
Even New England could not bear all his 
words, though there was there no King's 

Court or King's Chapel.— Amos 7: 13, 14." 
11 



154 APPENDIX B. 

George Sikes, '' The Life and Death of Sir 
Henry Vane, K^ cfcc" p. 8 (printed in the year 
1662). 

''Then he [Vane] returns for Old England. 
Shortly after, the leading and preparatory 
passages to the Long Parliament and the late 
public changes drew on. From the beginning 
of that Parliament he became such a drudge 
for his country, so willing on all accounts, both 
in person and estate, to spend and be spent 
(in his chargeable circumstances and un- 
wearied endeavors for the public good and just 
liberties of men as men, as also for the advance 
of the Kingdom of Christ in these nations) as 
I know not any former age or story can 
parallel." 

George Sikes, " The Life and Death of Sir 
Henry Vane, K^ cfcc" p. 8. 

''This lover of his nation and asserter of the 
just rights and liberties thereof unto his 
death, was also for limiting the civil power, 
delegated by the people to their Trustees 
in the Supreme Court of Parliament or to any 
Magistrates whatsoever. He held that there 



APPENDIX B. 155 

<ire certain fundamental rights and liberties of 
the nation that carry such a universal and un- 
deniable consonancy with the light of nature, 
right reason and the law of God, that they are in 
no wise to be abrogated or altered, but preserved. 
What less than this can secure people's lives, 
liberties and birth-rights, declared in Magna 
Charta, and ratified by two and thirty Par- 
liaments since?" 

George Sikes, '' The Life and Death of Sir 
Henry Vane, K^" p. 98. 

''This worthy patriot was freely chosen, 
without any seeking of his, to serve as burgess 
for the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, in that 
Parliament, which sat down November 3, 1640. 
About thirteen years did he indefatigably labor 
therein for his country's relief, against manifest 
oppressions and public grievances that were 
upon it. And well nigh ten years more he hath 
patiently suffered as a useless or pernicious 
person because of his destructive constitution 
to the peace and interest of tyranny. During 
the Long Parliament he was usually so engaged 
for the public, in the House and several com- 



156 APPENDIX B. 

mittees, from early in the morning to very late 
at night, that he had scarce any leisure to eat 
his bread, converse with his nearest relations^ 
or at all to mind his family affairs." 

George Sikes, '' The Life and Death of Sir 
Henry Vane, K'" p. 105. 

''Sir Harry Vane was one of the commis- 
sioners, and therefore the others need not be 
named, since he was all in any business where 
others were joined with him. He was indeed 
a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant wit^ 
a great understanding, which pierced into and 
discerned the purposes of other men with 
wonderful sagacity; whilst he had himself 
vultum clausum, that no man could make a 
guess of what he intended. He was of a 
temper not to be moved, and of rare dissimu- 
lation, and could comply when it was not 
seasonable to contradict, without losing ground 
by the condescension; and if he were not 
superior to Mr. Hampden, he was inferior to 
no other man, in all mysterious artifices. There 
need no more be said of his ability than that 
he was chosen to cozen and deceive a whole 



APPENDIX B. 157 

nation, which excel in craft and cunning; 
which he did with notable pregnancy and 
dexterity, and prevailed with a people that 
could not otherwise be prevailed upon than 
by advancing their idol presbytery, to sacrifice 
their peace, their interest and their faith, to 
the erecting a power and authority that re- 
solved to persecute presbytery to an extirpa- 
tion; and very near brought their purpose to 
pass." (This is Lord Clarendon's account of 
Vane's success in securing the adoption of 
''The Solemn League and Covenant," in which 
he eulogises Vane's genius, and falsely im- 
pugns the character of his motives and 
methods.) 

"In November, 1640, again elected for the 
borough of Kingston-upon-Hull, Sir Henry 
Vane the younger sat down at Westminster, 
a member of the ever-memorable Long Parlia- 
ment. From that instant his course was 
plain, and never swerved from. ''In the be- 
ginning of the great Parhament," says one who 
had watched him well, the honest and able 
Ludlow, "he was elected to serve his country 



158 APPENDIX B. 

among them, without the least appUcation 
on his part to that end. And in this station, 
he soon made appear how capable he was of 
managing great affairs, possessing in the highest 
perfection a quick and ready apprehension, a 
strong and tenacious memory, a profound 
and penetrating judgment, a just and noble 
eloquence, with an easy and graceful man- 
ner of speaking. To these were added a 
singular zeal and affection for the good of the 
Commonwealth, and a resolution and courage 
not to be shaken or diverted from the public 
service." 

Quoted from Forster's ''Statesmen of the 
Commonwealth. ' ' 

"I have, madam, whilst I own a love to my 
country, a deep interest in the public loss, 
which so many worthy persons lament. The 
world is robbed of an unparalleled example of 
virtue and piety. His great abilities made his 
enemies persuade themselves that all the revo- 
lutions in the last age were wrought by his 
influence, as if the world were only moved by 
his engine. In him they lodged all the dying. 



APPENDIX B. 159 

hopes of his party. There was no opportunity 
that he did not improve for the advantage of 
his country, and when he was in his last and 
much deplored scene, he strove to make the 
people in love with that freedom they had so 
lavishly and foolishly thrown away. He was 
great in all his actions, but to me he seemed 
greatest in his sufferings, when his enemies 
seemed to fear that he alone should be able to 
acquaint them with a change of fortune. In 
his lowest condition you have seen him the 
terror of a great prince, strengthened by many 
potent confederates and armies; you have seen 
him live in high estimation and honour, and 
certainly he died with it. Men arrive at 
honours by several ways. The martyrs, though 
they wanted the glittering crowns the princes 
in those ages dispensed, have rich ones in 
every just man's esteem. Virtue, though un- 
fortunate, shines in spite of all its enemies; 
nor is it in any power to deface those lasting 
monuments your friend hath raised of his, in 
every heart that either knew him, or held any 
intelligence with fame." (Extract from a letter 



160 APPENDIX B. 

from a person of noble birth to a relative of 
Vane about a week after the execution.) 

''Tell me, my Friend, how did he wield his 
glittering flaming sword? Did not it behave 
itself valiantly, conquering and turning every 
way to preserve the way of truth, liberty. 
Righteousness, and the cause of the Lord and 
his people? Was not his whole armor very 
rich? Was it not all from the sanctuary, for 
beauty and strength? Oh, mighty man of 
valor! thou champion for the Lord and His 
host, when they were defied! How hast thou 
spoiled them! The Goliah is trodden under 
foot. The whole army of the Philistines fly. 
Is he fled? Is he gone from amongst men? 
Was not this earth, this kingdom worthy of 
him? Wast thou upon the top of the Mount 
of Olives with him, to see how he was lifted up, 
glorified, advanced? Didst thou see him 
ascend, and chariots and heavenly hosts, the 
glorious train accompanying him to his cham- 
ber, to the palace of the great King, whither 
he is gone, we gazing below after him? But 
will he not come again? Will not the Lord, his 



APPENDIX B. 161 

Bridegroom, bring him, when he shall come to 
reign, and his saints with him? Make ready 
then, my friend. Gird up thy loins. Ride 
through gloriously, for the day is a great day 
of battle. And he that overcometh shall sit 
down with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the 
Prophets, the Apostles, and our late Friend 
Vane, in the kingdom of Heaven, whither I 
shall ever long to be prepared to set forward 
with the first, and to meet thee, Friend, 
ascending into the heavenly place." (Extract 
from a letter from a friend out of the country 
to one who accompanied Sir Henry Vane to 
the scaffold.) 



APPENDIX C. 

Additional Modern Appreciations of Vane. 

"The most distinguished personage who 
arrived at this time was Henry Vane, after- 
wards Sir Henry Vane the younger, the heir of 
one of the most powerful noblemen of England, 
and, "a young gentleman of excellent parts, '^ 
whose accession was hailed as an omen of good. 
He had long been desirous of visiting America, 
and had only been prevented by the prohibi- 
tion of his father, who yielded to the commands 
of King Charles, and suffered him to depart.'^ 

John S. Barry, "History of Massachusetts,'^ 
First Period, p. 207. 

"It was a period of intense and violent 
excitement. Popular controversies had pre- 
ceded his arrival; and to the pressure of ex- 
ternal aggressions, were added internal com- 
motions of by no means a trifling nature. 



APPENDIX C. 163 

Faction and intrigue were rearing their hydra- 
heads in direst strife. Extraordinary re- 
Hgious dissensions were on the eve of con- 
vulsing society to its centre. With the genius- 
of the people he was little acquainted; nor was 
he imbued with the prejudices which their 
situation engendered. Some of the principal 
persons, jealous of the enthusiasm with which 
he was received, and of his interventions to 
heal the distractions of the Commonwealth^, 
(see Winthrop I. 211-214) looked upon him with 
coldness and mistrust. And, ' more for things 
than persons, spirit then forms,' and owning 
and cherishing goodness everywhere, the liber- 
ality of his heart, which refused to be tied down 
to all the formalities of the age, was little in 
unison with the cynical moroseness of a portion 
of the clergy. Hence the day on which he was 
invested with the purple of magistracy, saw 
a formidable opposition organized against 
him, determined to embarrass his government 
at every step; and so well did his antagonists 
succeed in involving himself personally in 
difficulties, and his most intimate friends in. 



164 APPENDIX C. 

hopeless and inextricable confusion, that his 
administration was brief and stormy; and by 
the trials he encountered he was painfully con- 
vinced of his mistake in accepting an office, 
which, under other and more favorable aus- 
pices, there can be no doubt he would have 
filled as acceptably and as successfully as 
either of his predecessors." 

John S. Barry, ^^ History of Massachusetts, '' 
First Period, pp. 209, 210. 

''But twenty-four years of age at this time, 
his was indeed a remarkable character. . . 
He was a man, and had doubtless the failings of 
R man. Yet the gravity of his deportment^ 
the calm and contemplative composure of his 
countenance, the complete control which he 
had gained over his passions, with his deep 
penetration, and his intuitive discernment of 
the characters and purposes of others, by even 
Clarendon are noted as extraordinary qualities, 
rendering him, if not the superior, at least the 
equal of Hampden; and his profound theolog- 
ical attainments, the purity of his mind, his 
easy and graceful eloquence, and the brilliance 



APPENDIX C. 165 

of his genius, won for him the warmest eu- 
logiums of the gifted Milton, who is lavish of 
his encomiums upon the young champion of 
liberty. Dark dissimulation was no attribute 
of his nature. Whatever of enthusiasm he 
possessed, it was tinged with no fanaticism; 
stained with no hypocricy; nor did it precipi- 
tate him into injudicious measures, or sangui- 
nary excesses, but added new luster to his ac- 
quired abilities, new powers to his natural sa- 
gacity; and to the latest hour of his life, amid 
the wreck of his fortune and the treachery of 
his associates, . . . never for a moment 
did he swerve from his principles, but pre- 
pared himself for his fate with heroic and 
even smiling intrepidity." 

John S. Barry, '^ History of Massachusetts,'^ 
First Period, p. 208. 

''In every great measure of the Commons the 
name of the younger Vane now prominently 
appears; and pending the trial of Strafford, he 
had carried up the impeachment which dis- 
abled the power of Laud, the once terrible 
enemy of toleration. In all matters of re- 



166 APPENDIX C. 

ligious reform he more especially distinguished 
himself; he was one of the greatest supporters 
of the famous 'root and branch' petition 
against prelacy; in the committee of which 
Hyde was chairman he spoke with masterly 
•effect in favor of the bill against episcopal 
government; and when the famous Assembly 
of Divines assembled at Westminster, to de- 
liberate on the state of the Church, and the 
interests of religion, being requested by the 
House of Commons, to take upon himself the 
-duty of one of its lay members, he rendered 
himself conspicuously eminent in the con- 
sultations of that most grave and learned 
body; not only by his theological attainments, 
hut by the singular subtlety and skill with 
which he addressed them to the loftier pur- 
poses of government; and in the faith of those 
opinions ... he sought to impress upon 
his more sectarian colleagues the necessity of 
associating with the popular principle in civil 
affairs an extreme and universal toleration of 
religious differences." 



APPENDIX C. 167 

John Forster, '^Statesmen of the Common- 
wealth," p. 282. 

''When he retired for a time from public 
life, in disgust at the usurpation of Cromwell, 
he occupied his leisure with religious and 
political writing. In politics he wrote with 
the clear and impressive reason, the simple and 
masterful style of a consummate statesman. 
In religion he indulged occasionally those 
wild and visionary thoughts which have 
seldom failed to visit all strong and fervent 
spirits of the earth, when they have flung 
themselves passionately into the profounder 
questions of man's existence and destiny." 

John Forster, '' Statesmen of the Common- 
wealth,'' p. 287. 

'' A theoretical republican Vane was not, if it 
is attempted to be shown by this that the 
motive of his public exertions was merely a 
preconceived idea of the abstract excellence of 
that form of civil society. What Vane sought 
was good and popular government, extensive 
representation, freedom of thought, freedom of 
the press, and perfect liberty of conscience. 



168 APPENDIX C. 

Because he could not find these under a Mon- 
archy, he became a repubUcan." 

John Forster, "Statesmen of the Common- 
wealth;' p. 300. 

''Vane comprehended the principles of 
civil and religious liberty. He understood 
them thoroughly, and when still scarcely more 
than a youth, defended them with an ingenuity, 
force, and felicity of illustration, particularly 
from the Scriptures, which will not suffer by 
comparison with anything that has since been 
done in the same great cause. He well deserves 
a place in that illustrious company, who have 
taken the lead, in modern times, in asserting 
the rights of conscience, and in vindicating 
the principles of Christian liberty. He was 
contemporaneous with Roger Williams, and 
was followed by John Milton, William 
Penn, and John Locke. Not one of them 
grasped the subject more completely than he 
did ; and when we consider that he was zealously 
engaged in religious discussions, and enthu- 
siastically devoted to what he thought the 
truth, we can hardly hesitate to yield to him 



APPENDIX C. 169 

the glorious distinction of having to a degree 
that was never surpassed, if ever equalled, 
comprehended in theory, and developed in 
practice throughout his whole life the sacred 
principles of Christian toleration and religious 
liberty. 

As writers and as statesmen. Vane and 
WilUams seem to deserve the glory of the 
earliest promulgation of the principles of 
toleration. They understood them, in their 
whole extent, as applicable not only to Chris- 
tians, but to all men of whatever reUgion." 

Charles W. Upham's ''Life of Sir Henry 
Vane,'' pp. 69, 70. 

''At the same time came Henry Vane, the 
younger, a man of the purest mind; a states- 
man of spotless integrity; whose name the 
progress of intelligence and liberty will erase 
from the rubric of fanatics and traitors, and 
insert high among the aspirants after truth 
and the martyrs for liberty. . . . He 
was happy in the possession of an admirable 
genius, though naturally more inclined to 
contemplative excellence than to action; he 

12 



170 APPENDIX C. 

was happy in the eulogist of his virtues, for 
Milton, ever so parsimonious of praise, reserv- 
ing the majesty of his verse to celebrate the 
glories and vindicate the providence of God, 
was lavish of his encomiums on the youthful 
friend of religious liberty. But Vane was still 
more happy in attaining early in life a firmly 
settled theory of morals, and in possessing an 
energetic will, which made all his conduct to 
the very last conform to the doctrines he had 
espoused, turning his dying hour into a seal 
of the witness, which his life had ever borne 
with noble consistency, to the freedom of con- 
science and the people/' 

Bancroft's ^^ History of the United States," 
Vol. I., p. 383. 

"Now that all England was carried away 
with eagerness for monarchy. Sir Henry Vane, 
the former Governor of Massachusetts, the 
benefactor of Rhode Island, the ever-faithful 
friend of New England, adhered with un- 
daunted firmness to the glorious cause of 
popular hberty; and shunned by every man 
who courted the returning monarch, he became 



APPENDIX C. 171 

noted for the most 'catholic' unpopularity. 
He fell from the affections of the English people, 
ivhen the English people fell from the jealous 
•care of their liberties. He had ever been 
incorrupt and disinterested, merciful, and 
liberal. When Unitarianism was persecuted, 
not as a sect, but as a blasphemy. Vane inter- 
ceded for its advocate; he pleaded for the 
liberty of the Quakers imprisoned for their 
opinions; as a legislator he demanded justice in 
b)ehalf of the Roman Catholics; he resisted the 
.sale of Penruddoc's men into slavery, as an 
aggression on the rights of man. The immense 
emoluments of his office as treasurer of the 
navy he voluntarily resigned. When the Pres- 
byterians, though his adversaries, were forcibly 
excluded from the House of Commons, he also 
^absented himself. When the Monarchy was 
overthrown, and a Commonwealth attempted. 
Vane reluctantly filled a seat in the Council, and 
resuming his place as a legislator, amidst the 
floating wrecks of the English constitution, he 
<;lung to the existing Parliament as to the only 
fragment on which it was possible to rescue 



172 APPENDIX C. 

English liberty. His energy gave to the Eng- 
lish navy its efficient organization; if England 
could cope with Holland on the sea, the glory 
of preparation is Vane's. His labors in that 
remnant of a Parliament were immediately 
turned to the purification of liberty at its 
sources; and he is believed to have anticipated 
every great principle of the modern reform bilL 
He steadily resisted the usurpation of Crom- 
well; as he had a right to esteem the sorrows of 
his country his private sorrows, he declared 
it no small grief that the evil and wretched 
principles of absolute monarchy should be 
revived by men professing godliness, and Crom- 
well, unable to intimidate him, confined him 
to Carisbrook Castle. Both Cromwell and 
Vane were unsuccessful statesmen; the first 
desired to secure the government of England to 
his family, the other to vindicate it for the 
people." 

Bancroft's ^^ History of the United States," 
Vol. II, pp. 36-38. 

''At the election in May, John Winthrop and 
Thomas Dudley were chosen councillors for life. 



APPENDIX C. 



173 



But the young Henry Vane was at the same 
time elected Governor of Massachusetts — a 
signal proof of the influence and importance 
he had so rapidly acquired in the Colony. 
Winthrop, who accepted the Deputy Governor- 
ship under him, says of him in his journal on 
this occasion : 'Because he was son and heir to a 
privy councillor in England, the ships congrat- 
ulated his election with a volley of great shot.' 
But Vane had ability and enterprise enough to 
have secured an ultimate success and celebrity, 
as well as salutes of ' great shot,' without the 
aid of any mere family prestige. His adminis- 
tration, however, was destined to be disturbed 
by a violence of religious and civil controversy 
which has never been exceeded on the same 
soil, if indeed, on any soil beneath the sun." 

Robert C. Winthrop, ''Memorial History of 
Boston;' Vol. I., pp. 125-126. - 

''From the day when scarcely more than a 
boy he defended Anne Hutchinson in Massa- 
chusetts, to the day when yet in his full 
strength he serenely laid his head upon the 
block on Tower-hill by command of Charles II, 



174 APPENDIX C. 

he consecrated the whole force of extraordinary- 
powers to the expounding and vindication of 
what he held to be English freedom, overlaid by 
accretions which were in reality foreign to it> 
If the principles for which he lived and died are 
examined, it will be found that they are no less 
precious to Americans than to Englishmen. 
'Government of the people, by the people, and. 
for the people,' the famous sentence of Abra- 
ham Lincoln's Gettsyburg address, was also the 
fundamental thought with young Sir Henry- 
Vane. 

One by one England has adopted and is- 
adopting the reforms which he proclaimed to be 
necessary in order that the State should rest 
upon the substructure fitted for it — the ex- 
tension of the suffrage, the transformation of 
the Upper House, the disestablishment of the 
Church — the doing away with every privilege 
of faith and class that stands in the path of 
toleration and fair equality — the utter com- 
mitting of power to the hands of the people 
assembled in their representatives in the great 
national Council. As in England and her de- 



APPENDIX C. 



175 



pendencies the power of the people grows, a 
process which we see going forward without 
break, that noble Commonwealth becomes 
more and more manifest which Vane prema- 
turely tried and died to bring to pass. For 
and in England he struggled, when America 
was scarcely in embryo, but no statesman more 
soundly American can be named than he." 

James K. Hosmer's "Young Sir Henry 
Vane;' pp. 567, 568. 

''Vane was one of the noblest characters of 
his age, though 'the subject of widely differing 
judgments.'" 

Sanford H. Cobb, "The Rise of Religious 
Liberty in America;' p. 190. 

"By far the most advanced man of his time 
was Sir Henry Vane. He had suffered some- 
what from the intolerance of Massachusetts, 
and returning to England, had thrown his 
energies into the struggle against the king. 
But whether from king or commonwealth, he 
did not approve of interference with rehgion. 
In 1656 he pubhshed A Healing Question, in 
which he took the ground that 'the magistrate 



176 APPENDIX C. 

had no right to go beyond matters of outward 
practice, converse, and deahngs in the things 
of this Hfe between man and man.' In this 
same essay he also maintained that the army 
should be subject to Parliament, for which he 
was haled before Cromwell and thrown into 
prison." 

" The Rise of Religious Liberty in America," 
p. 60, by Sanford H. Cobb. 

''Vane's American career has been harshly 
judged by American historians. He made 
many mistakes, but the greatest mistake was 
that made by the Colonists themselves, when 
out of deference to birth and rank, they set a 
young and inexperienced stranger to deal with 
problems which tasked the wisdom of their 
ablest heads. Subsequently, however, his 
connection with New England became an 
advantage to the Colonies, and in 1645, Mas- 
sachusetts merchants in difficulties with the 
English government found him a strong help." 

C. H. Firth in "Dictionary of National 
Biography." 



APPENDIX C. 177 

''It is impossible to suppose that the Scottish 
commissioners were simply outwitted by Vane; 
they accepted the amendment because they 
hoped to interpret it according to their own 
wisheS; through the political and military 
influence the alliance gave them." 

C. H. Firth in "Dictionary of National 
Biography,^' cf. with Lord Clarendon's inter- 
pretation of Vane's conduct, p. 156. 

''In the question whether the republic should 
have an established Church or not, Vane and 
Cromwell took opposite sides. The proposals 
of Owen and other Independent ministers to the 
committee for the propagation of the gospel, 
which Cromwell carried out in the ecclesiasti- 
cal organization of the Protectorate were abso- 
lutely contrary to Vane's principles." 

C. H. Firth in "Dictionary of National 
Biography.'' 

"Vane, who was one of the few men of the 
time who really understood and believed in the 
principles of civil and religious liberty, and 
had a horror of all forms of bigotry, had no 
•sympathy with the attacks of the clergy on 



178 APPENDIX C. 

Mrs. Hutchinson, with many of whose opinions 
he entirely agreed. A strong opposition under 
the lead of Winthrop was organized against 
him, and on the day of the annual election, in 
1637, he was defeated. But he had gained the 
affections of the people of Boston, and was 
instantly chosen by them one of their repre- 
sentatives to the General Court. ... In 
order to put down the Hutchinsonian heresy, a 
law was passed by the General Court, that no 
strangers should be received within the juris- 
diction of the Colony except such as should be 
allowed by some of the magistrates. This 
created such public discontent that Governor 
Winthrop felt obliged to put forward a 'De- 
fence,' to which A^ane immediately replied. 

From first to last he remained an inflexible 
republican. After the death of Cromwell he 
was elected to the Parliament of 1659, and 
was there the leader of the republican party^ 
When the Long Parliament was again sum- 
moned to assemble, Vane was appointed one 
of the Committee of Safety, and subsequently 



APPENDIX C. 179 

President of the Council of State. The restora- 
tion of the King led to his disgrace and death. 

He was a leader of the Independents, and 
was one of the lay members nominated by 
Parliament to take part in the proceedings and 
discussions of the Assembly of divines. His 
labors in behalf of New England were ardu- 
ous and important. It was in great measure 
through his influence that the charter for the 
Rhode Island Colony was procured, and Roger 
Williams declared that his name ought to be 
held in honored remembrance by her people.'' 
— ^^ The New American Cyclopoedia.^^ 

"He was sent to France and Geneva. Here 
he no doubt acquired the strongly Puritan 
views for which he had been prepared by a 
remarkable change of mind when quite a boy. 
In spite of the personal efforts of Laud, who 
made the attempt at the King's request, he 
refused to give them up, and fell especially 
under the influence of Pym. In 1635, he 
emigrated to Massachusetts, where he wa&. 
elected Governor in 1636, though only twenty- 



180 APPENDIX C. 

four years of age. After two (?) years in 
office, during which he showed striking ad- 
ministrative abinty,.he was defeated by Win- 
throp, the former Governor, chiefly on account 
of the protection he had given to Mrs. Hutchin- 
son in the rehgious controversies which she 
raised. Vane returned to England in August, 
1637. Being elected to the Short Parliament 
for Kingston-upon-Hull, he speedily became a 
leader of the Independents and a marked man. 

He was, in fact, foremost in all the doings 
of the Long Parliament. When the war broke 
out he surrendered his office of treasurer of the 
navy, but was replaced in it by the Parliament. 
Hereupon he gave a rare example of disin- 
terestedness by relinquishing all the profits of 
the office, stated at £30,000 a year, stipulating 
only that £1,000 should be paid to a Deputy. 
In August, 1642, he was on the Committee of 
Defence. In 1643, he was the leading man 
.among the commissioners sent to treat for a 
league with the Scots. Vane, who was bitterly 
opposed to the tyranny of the Presbyterian 



APPENDIX C. 181 

system, was successful in two important points. 
The aim of the Scots was chiefly the propaga- 
tion of their disciphne in England and Wales, 
and for this they wanted only a 'covenant.' 
Vane succeeded in getting the bond termed 
'The Solemn League and Covenant,' and fur- 
ther in substituting the expression 'according 
to the word of God and the example of the best 
Reformed churches,' for the latter phrase 
alone. In the Westminster Assembly, too, he 
joined Cromwell in insisting upon full rehgious 
liberty, and in opposing the view that the 
taking of the Covenant should be necessary for 
ordination." — ''The Encyclopoedia Britannica," 
Ninth Edition. 

''In summing up the character of Henry 
Vane we may use the words of an ancient 
historian: Vir supra humanam potentiam mag- 
nitudine animi praeditus. In portraying a 
character one looks for some faults, as an 
artist requires shading for his picture. Yet,, 
throughout his whole career, nowhere have we 
found thought or action which needed to be 
excused or stated in a guarded form. One 



182 APPENDIX C. 

knows not whether most to admire the correct- 
ness of his pohtical judgments, his largeness of 
view with his grasp of details, his triumph over 
the temptations which beset his rough path, 
his humanity and his toleration. Having de- 
voted his life to the good of his country, and 
to the cause of liberty, his personality seems 
lost in the great events of his time. His re- 
ligious views in no way dimmed his charity or 
impeded his activity, while they strengthened 
the earnest tone of his mind, and gave a firm- 
ness to his character, which, as some thought, 
he did not naturally possess." — Wm. W. Ire- 
land's " The Life of Sir Henry Vane," p. 496. 



APPENDIX D. 

John Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 

Charles Francis Adams {" Three Episodes of 
Massachusetts History''), though utterly mis- 
interpreting the conduct of Vane while Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, as other historians 
have done, makes the following comparison 
between him and Winthrop: ''In the Massa- 
chusetts of 1637, there was nothing but the 
clergy. Vane was the popular leader in the 
first movement against their supremacy, and 
the fight he made showed he possessed par- 
liamentary qualities of a high order; but, as 
was apparent in the result of it, the movement 
itself was premature. ... As compared 
with Winthrop, the younger Vane was a man 
of larger and more active mind, of more varied 
and brilliant qualities. What is now known 
as an advanced thinker, he instinctively looked 
deeper into the heart of his subject. Win- 



184 APPENDIX D. 

throp, it is true, shared in the darkness and the 
superstition, and even — in his calm, moderate 
way — in the intolerance of his time; but it 
was just that sharing in the weakness as well 
as the strength — the superstitions as well as 
the faith — of his time which made him so 
valuable in the place chance called upon him 
to fill. ... In 1637 — persecution or no 
persecution, momentarily right or momentarily 
wrong — Massachusetts could far better spare 
Henry Vane from its councils than it could 
have spared John Winthrop." (Vol. II, pp. 
465, 466.) In other words, Winthrop wrong, 
if only moderately wrong, was a wiser and 
safer leader for the Massachusetts Colonists 
than Vane right. The man possessing, accord- 
ing to Mr. Adams' estimate, the smaller and 
less active mind, and less varied and less bril- 
liant qualities, and having a shallower insight 
into vital principles, and withal chargeable 
with the darkness and superstition and in- 
tolerance of his time, the better man to be at 
the head of political affairs! Is such logic 
convincing? Can what followed be said to be 



APPENDIX D. • 1S5 

unexpected? We know too well the fate of Mrs. 
Hutchinson. Mr. Adams continues: ''Vane's 
departure was none the less an irreparable loss, 
almost a fatal blow, to John Wheelwright, for 
by it he was deprived of his protector, and 
left, naked and bound, in the hands of his 
enemies. Nor did they long delay over the 
course they would take with him.'' 



18 



APPENDIX E. 

The Famous Synod of 1637. 

''A synod of the church was called to give 
ecclesiastical judgment on the heresy [of Mrs. 
Hutchinson]. This body met at Newtown 
(Cambridge) in the spring of 1637, and gravely 
sat itself down to discuss 'eighty-two erroneous 
opinions' taken from the teachings of Mrs. 
Hutchinson and her brother. Full liberty of 
discussion was given, with the curious proviso 
that ' no one should be held responsible for the 
opinions he defended unless he acknowledged 
them to be his own.' The arch heretic and 
her brother were examined. 'Inquisition was 
made into men's private judgment, as well as 
into their declarations and practices.' Cotton 
acknowledged that most of the 'opinions' were 
erroneous, but could not condemn all, and 
drew upon himself the sharp criticism of some 
of his brethren. . . . After various at- 
tempts at compromise he, according to his 



APPENDIX E. 187 

nature and manner, got himself down where 
the chief power lay, with more or less of a 
ivrench to his own convictions. 

The synod condemned the heretical opin- 
ions, and reported its action to the General 
Court. This body met shortly after, in May, 
1637, at Newtown, 'because of the excitement 
in Boston,' and proceeded to elect a Governor, 
putting Winthrop in the room of Vane, and 
•showing to the latter scant courtesy in any 
attempts he made at defence of his position 
-and conduct. In order to forestall other 
heretical disturbances, the Court prohibited 
the harboring of persons whose religious views 
"Were considered dangerous. The hill was 
opposed by Vane, to whom Winthrop replied, 
■^ the intent of the law is to preserve the welfare 
•of the body.' " Sanford H. Cobb, "Rise of 
Religious Liberty in America/' pp. 191, 192. 

''This oppressive statute caused such dis- 
content that Winthrop thought it necessary 
to publish a defence, to which Vane replied and 
Winthrop rejoined. The controversy would 
long since have lost its interest had it not been 



188 APPENDIX E. 

for the theory then first advanced by Win- 
throp, that the corporation of Massachusetts^ 
having bought its land, held it as though it 
were a private estate, and might exclude 
whom it pleased therefrom ; and ever since this 
plea has been set up in justification of every 
excess committed by the theocracy." Brooks 
Adams, "The Emancipation of Massachusetts,^^ 
p. 58. 

''In the case of the Antinomians, the new 
movement was able to shelter itself under the 
authority of the younger Vane, then Governor,, 
and for a while under the apparent sanction of 
the powerful Cotton. But no other religious 
disturbance was ever allowed to gather head 
enough, to become dangerous to the peace 
and unity of the little state. Dislike as we 
may the principles on w^hich uniformity was- 
enforced, we must admire the forehanded 
statesmanship of the Massachusetts leaders in 
strangling religious disturbances at birth, as 
Pharaoh's midwives did infant Hebrews." (?) 
Edward Eggleston, " The Beginners of a 
Nation;' p. 267. 



APPENDIX F. 

Vane's Conception of Civil Government, 
Liberty Regulated by Law and Leg- 
islation Confined to Civil 
Things. 

Vane's last effort before Parliament was the 
reporting a bill for the future and permanent 
settlement of the government on the basis of 
his Hfe-long contention. The following were 
the heads of the bill: 

''1. That the supreme power, delegated by 
the people to their trustees, ought to be in 
some fundamentals not dispensed with;" that 
is, that a constitution ought to be drawn up and 
established, specifying the principles by which 
the successive ''trustees" or representatives, 
assembled under it, should be guided and 
restrained in the conduct of the government, 
and clearly stating those particulars in which 
they would not be permitted to legislate or act. 



190 APPENDIX F. 

2. One point, which was to be determined 
and fixed in this constitution, so that no leg- 
islative power should ever be able to alter or 
move it, was this: ''That it is destructive to 
the people's liberties (to which, by God's- 
blessing, they are fully restored) to admit any 
earthly king, or single person, to the legislative 
or executive power over this nation." 

3. The only other principle reported as- 
fundamental, and to be placed at the very 
basis of the constitution, was this, ''That the 
supreme power is not entrusted to the people's 
trustees to erect matters of faith and worship^ 
so as to exercise compulsion therein." Quoted 
from John Forster's ^'Statesmen of the Com- 
monwealth.'^ 



APPENDIX G. 

Vane's Denial of all Complicity with 
THE Execution of the King. 

In his speech at the time of his trial he told 
his judges: 

''When that great violation of privileges 
happened to the ParUament, so as by force of 
arms several members thereof were debarred 
coming into the House and keeping their seats 
there, this made me forbear to come to the 
Parliament for the space of ten weeks, to wit., 
from the 3d of December, 1648, till towards 
the middle of February following, or to meddle 
in any public transactions; and during that 
time the matter most obvious to exception, in 
way of alteration of the government, did 
happen. I can, therefore, truly say that I 
had neither consent nor vote at first in the 
resolutions of the House, concerning the non- 
addresses to his late Majesty, so neither had I, 



192 APPENDIX G. 

in the least, any consent in or approbation to, 
his death; but on the contrary, when required 
by the Parliament to take an oath to give my 
approbation ex post facto, to what was done, I 
utterly refused, and would not accept of sitting 
in the Council of State upon those terms, but 
occasioned a new oath to be drawn, wherein 
that was omitted." 



APPENDIX H. 

Yane's Opposition to Cromwell's Usurpa- 
tion. 

Extract from Vane's defence at his trial: 
''And I do publicly challenge all persons 
whatsoever that can give information of any 
bribes or covert ways used by me, during the 
whole time of my public acting. Therefore I 
hope it will be evident to the consciences of the 
jury that what I have done hath been upon 
principles of integrity, honour, justice, reason, 
and conscience, and not as suggested in the 
indictment by instigation of the devil or want 
of the fear of God. A second great change 
that happened upon the constitution of the 
Parliament, and in them, of the very kingdom 
itself and the laws thereof, to the plucking up 
of the liberties of it by the very roots, and the 
introducing of an arbitrary regal power, under 
the name of Protector, by force and the law of 



194 APPENDIX H. 

the sword, was the usurpation of Cromwell, 
which I opposed from the beginning to the 
end, to that degree of suffering, and with that 
constancy, that well near had cost me not only 
the loss of my estate, but of my very life, if he 
might have had his will, which a higher than 
he hindered; yet I did remain a prisoner, under 
great hardship, four months, in an island, by 
his order. Hereby that which I have asserted 
is most undeniably evident, as to the true 
grounds and ends of my actions all along, that 
were against usurpation on the one hand, or 
such extraordinary actings on the other as I 
doubted the laws might not warrant or in- 
demnify, unless I were inforced thereunto by 
an over-ruling and inevitable necessity." 



APPENDIX I. 

Vane's Estimate of the Cromwells, 
Father and Son. 

When Richard Cromwell, fearing lest Vane's^ 
known hostility and powerful influence should 
prevail against him, resolved to dissolve the 
Parliament, the House of Commons determined 
to resist his action, and ordered that the door& 
be closed against the official messenger of the 
Protector, and that he be refused admittance. 
As the House sat behind closed doors, declining 
to listen to the Protector's summons to meet 
him in the House of Lords, Vane addressed the 
speaker in the following words: 

''Mr. Speaker — Among all the people of the 
universe, I know none who have shown so 
much zeal for the liberty of their country, as 
the English at this time have done. They 
have, by the help of divine Providence, over- 
come all obstacles, and have made themselves- 



196 APPENDIX I. 

free. We have driven away the hereditary- 
tyranny of the house of Stuart, at the expense 
of much blood and treasure, in hopes of en- 
joying hereditary liberty, after having shaken 
off the yoke of kingship; and there is not a 
man amongst us, who could have imagined 
that any person would be so bold as to dare 
to attempt the ravishing from us that freedom, 
which cost us so much blood and so much 
labour. But so it happens, I know not by 
what misfortune we are fallen into the error 
of those who poisoned the emperor Titus to 
make room for Domitian, who made away with 
Augustus that they might have Tiberius, and 
changed Claudius into Nero, I am sensible 
these examples are foreign from my subject, 
since the Romans in those days were buried 
in lewdness and luxury; whereas the people of 
England are now renowned, all over the world, 
for their great virtue and discipline; and yet 
suffer an idiot without courage, without sense, 
nay, without ambition, to have dominion in a 
country of liberty! One could bear a little with 
Oliver Cromwell, though, contrary to his oath 



APPENDIX I. 197 

of fidelity to the Parliament, contrary to his 
duty to the public, contrary to the respect he 
owed that venerable body from whom he re- 
ceived his authority, he usurped the govern- 
ment. His merit was so extraordinary, that 
our judgments, our passions, might be blinded, 
by it. He made his way to empire by the 
most brilliant actions; he had under his com- 
mand an army that had made him a conqueror, 
and a people that had made him their general. 
But as for Richard Cromwell, his son, who is 
he? What are his titles? We have seen that 
he had a sword by his side; but did he ever 
draw it? And, what is of more importance in 
this case, is he fit to get obedience from a 
mighty nation, who could never make a foot- 
man obey him? Yet we must recognize this 
man as our king, under the style of Protector! 
A man without birth, without courage, without 
conduct. For my part, I declare, sir, it shall 
never be said that I made such a man my 
master." 

Richard Cromwell did not again appear in 
public after this signal defeat. The govern- 



198 APPENDIX I. 

merit was administered for a short time in his 
name, when he formally abdicated. After a 
brief unsuccessful attempt at a republican 
administration under a resuscitation of the 
famous Long Parliament came the restoration 
of the Monarchy and the execution of Vane, 
the noble patriot, the fearless champion of the 
rights of the people, the consistent apostle of 
human freedom. 



1 



APPENDIX J. 

Extract from Vane's Final Confession 
Before his Execution. 

^'I die in the certain faith and foresight that 
this cause shall have its resurrection in my death. 
My blood will he the seed sown, by which this 
glorious cause will spring up, which God will 
speedily raise. Then, laying down this earthly 
tabernacle is no more but throwing down the 
mantle by which a double portion of the spirit 
will fall on the rest of God's people. And if by 
my being offered up the faith of many be con- 
firmed, and others convinced and brought to the 
knowledge of the truth, how can I desire greater 
honour and matter of rejoicing. As for that 
glorious cause which God hath owned in these 
nations and will own, in which so ynany righteous 
souls have lost their lives, and so many have 
been engaged by my countenance and encourage- 
ment, shall I now give it up, and declare them 



200 APPENDIX J. 

all rebels and murderers. No, I will never da 
it; that precious blood shall never lie at my door. 
As a testimony and seal to the justness of that 
quarrel, I leave now mi/ life upon it, as a legacy 
to all the honest interest in these three nations.. 
Ten thousands deaths rather than defile my 
conscience, the chastity and purity of which I 
value beyond all this world! I would not for 
ten thousand lives part with this peace and 
satisfaction I have in my own heart both in 
holding to the purity of my principles, and to 
the righteousness of this good cause; and to the 
assurance that I have that God is now fulfilling 
all these great and precious promises, in order 
to what he is bringing forth. Although I see it 
not, yet I die in the faith and assured expectation 
of it.'' 



INDEX. 

Adams, Brooks, quoted, 73, 136, 188. 

Adams, Charles Francis, quoted, 69; compares Win 

throp and Vane, 183. 
Arnold, S. G., " Hist, of Rhode Island," quoted, 66, 137. 

Baillie, Robert, opinion of Vane, 99; quoted, 141. 
Bancroft, George, what is due to Vane, 115; quoted, 

169, 170. 
Barry, John S., quoted, 75, 136, 162, 163, 164. 
Baxter, Richard, quoted, 90. 
Bayne, Peter, quoted, 37, 110. 
Borgeaud, Charles, quoted, 20, 46, 93. 
Boston's early conditions, 45, 49. 
Bradshaw, John, 85. 
Browne, Robert, sketch of, 143. 
Browning, Robert, quoted, 14, 19. 
Bryce, James, opinion of Williams, 30. 
Byington, E. H., quoted, 148. 

Cambridge Platform, 148. 

Carlyle, Thomas, grotesque portrait of Vane, 100. 

Charles I, oppressions of, 17, 36; character of, 37; 

inaugurated civil war, 86. . 

Clarendon, Lord, instigated Vane's execution, 96; 

characterized Vane, 98, 156. 

14 



202 INDEX. 

Clarke, John, founder of a colony, 63 ; sent to England 
118; brought home second R. I. charter, 125. 

Cobb, Sanford H., quoted, 175. 186. 

Coddington, WilHam, founder of a colony, 63; his 
autocratic commission, 118; revoked, 120. 

Cotton. John, Boston pastor, 47; famous lines of, 48; 
entertained Vane, 70; defends Anne Hutchinson, 
70; remembered by Vane, 80; was he Vane's 
preceptor, 133; view of toleration, 134, and de- 
mocracy, 135; hostile to Mrs. Hutchinson, 135; 
not an Independent. 141. 

Cromwell. Oliver, supported by Vane at first, 88; on 
most intimate terms, 92; usurpation of, 93; 
opposed by Vane, 93, 193; famous exclamation, 
94 ; friend of WiUiams, 125 ; Vane's estimate of, 196. 

Cromwell, Richard, rose to power, 95; Vane's estimate 
of, 197; abdication, 198. 

Dexter, Henry M., quoted, 143, 147. 
Diman, Prof. J. L., quoted, 71, 77. 
Doyle, J. A., quoted, 144. 
Dyer, WilHam, referred to, 121. 
Eggleston, Edward, quoted, 74, 188. 
Eliot, Sir John, sent to the Tower, 36. 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, quoted, 179. 
England, condition of, in 17th century, 17, 36; emigra- 
tions from, 25; hindered by Laud, 26. 

Fiske, John, estimate of Vane, 99. 



INDEX. 203 

First Congregational Society in Providence called 

Presbyterian, 149. 
Firth, C. H., quoted, 92, 176, 177. 
Forster, John, "Life of Vane," quoted, 26, 83, 84, 87, 

157, 165, 167, 189. 

Garrard, George, quoted, 81. 

'Godwin's "Hist, of the Commonwealth," quoted, 83, 

84, 85. 
Green's "Short Hist, of England," quoted, 151. 

Hampden, John, 19; associated with Vane, 83; mortally 

wounded, 83. 
Haselrige, Arthur, referred to, 28. 
Hooker, Thomas, disputes with WilHams, 51. 
Hosmer, James K., "Life of Vane," quoted, 47, 77, 

139, 142, 152, 173. 
Hubbard, WilHam, view of Cotton, 137. 
Hutchinson Controversy, 69. 

Independency, defined, 142; consistent in England, 

150; Baptists Independents, 150. 
Ireland, WilHam W., "Life of Vane," 9; calls Vane 

"one of the founders of Rhode Island," 9 ; question 

considered, 64; quoted, 72, 181. 
Ireton, Henry, referred to, 85. 
Knowles, James D., quoted, 116. 
Laud, Archbishop, oppressions, of 37; relation to the 

King, 37; interview with Vane, 38. 
Lilburne, John, quoted, 92. 



204 INDEX. 

Long Parliament dissolved, 94. 

Ludlow, Edmund, quoted. 94. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, estimate of Vane. 101. 

Marten, Henry, referred to, 84. 

Mason, Major, Williams's letter to, 60. 

Massachusetts Puritans, not Independents, 145; Pres>- 

byterianized Congregationalists, 143, 147. 
Masson, Professor, quoted, 21. 
May, Thomas Erskine, quoted, 151. 
Maurice, Frederic D., quoted, 88. 
Mead, Edwin D., quoted, 133, 138, 140, 152. 
Milton, John, friend of Vane, 85, 88; secretary of the- 

council, 85, Areopagitica, quoted, 88; message to- 

Cromwell, 89; relation to WiUiams, 131; sonnet 

to Vane, 132. 
Neal's Hist, of New England, quoted, 51. 
New American Cyclopaedia, quoted, 177. 

Osbaldestone, Lambert, referred to, 28. 

Osgood, Herbert L., quoted, 145. 

Peters, Hugh, referred to, 44, 148. 

Petition of Rights, purpose of, 18. 

Phillips, Wendell, praise of Vane, 102. 

Pride's Purge, 87. 

Puritanism defined, 20-23. 

Pym, John, 19, 40; associated with Vane, 83; deatb 

of, 83. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, quoted, 151. 



INDEX. 205 

Reformation in England retarded, 20. 

Rhode Island, first charter, 115; second charter, 124. 

Rich, Sir Nathaniel, referred to, 40. 

Scott, Richard, quoted, 117. 

Scott, Thomas, referred to, 28. 

Self-denying Ordinance and New Model, 89. 

Sikes, George, contemporary arid biographer of Vane, 

quoted, 33, 153, 154, 155. 
Solemn League and Covenant, 87. 
St. John, O., referred to, 84, 93. 
Straus, Oscar, judgment of Vane, 111. 
Synod of 1637, described, 186. 

''The Nation," articles in, 138. 
Thornton, J. Wingate, quoted, 139. 

Upham, Charles W., ''Life of Vane," quoted, 52, 81, 
168. 

Vane, Sir Henry, Sr., official career, 13, 36. 

Vane, Sir Henry, Jr., birth and ancestry, 11; boyhood 
and education, 27; conversion to Puritanism, 29; 
sent to the Continent, 34; resolved to go to New 
England, 39; letter to his father, 41; his motives, 
43; reaches Boston, 44; reception, 45; interested 
in the Williams controversy, 51; described by 
Winthrop, 53; joins Boston church, 54; one of 
committee to settle difficulties between Puritan 
leaders, 54; elected Governor, 54; trouble about 
i;he flag, 55 ; disagreement with Winthrop, 58 ; 



206 INDEX. 

danger from the Indians, 59; relation to Aqiiid- 
neck, 62; to the Hutchinson controversy, 69;. 
again breaks with Winthrop, 71; advocates reU- 
gious Hberty, 71; resigns, 73; defeated by Win- 
throp, 74; elected to General Court, 75; returned 
home, 75; reconciled to Winthrop, 78; writes to 
him, 79; marriage, 82; elected to Parliament; 83; 
worthy successor of Hampden and Pym, 83; a 
leader of his party, 84; knighted by Charles I, and 
treasurer of navy, 86; account of his services, 
87-90; broke with Cromwell, 88; author of rehgious 
works, 91; imprisoned, 91; intimate relations, 
with Cromwell, 92; with WiUiams, 112, 119; 
opposed to Richard Cromwell, 95; arrested under 
Charles II and executed, 95; tribute by Clarendon, 
98; Baillie, 99; John Fiske, 99; Carlyle's por- 
trait, 100; Sir James Mackintosh's tribute, 101; 
Hallam's tribute, 102; Wendell PhilUps' tribute, 
102; indebtedness to, acknowledged by Williams, 
123; interest in Providence colony, 125; chief bene- 
factor, 129; Boston statue, 130; a memorial for 
Providence, 131; fundamental principles of, 105- 
109; conception of civil government, 189; refused 
to consent to the King's death, 191; defence at 
trial, 193; estimate of the Cromwells, 195; final 
confession, 199. 

Wentworth. Sir Thomas, character of, 14. 
Whitlocke, B., referred to, 84. 



INDEX. 207 

Williams, Roger, trial of, 50; saves English from 
Indian massacre, 59; secures Aquidneck for 
Clarke, 63; sent to England, 111; guest of Vane, 
112, 119; second visit, 117; accompanied by Clarke, 
118; welcomed by Vane, 119; author of books, 
119; aided by Vane, 123; on friendly terms with 
Cromwell, 125; and with Milton, 131; summoned 
home, 125. 

Wilson, John, opposes Mrs. Hutchinson, 70. 

Winthrop, John, quoted, 51; describes Vane's arrival, 
53; differed from Vane, 58, 71; defeats Vane, 74; 
reconciled to Vane, 78; recognizes Vane's services, 
78; compared with Vane, 183. 

Winthrop, John, Jr., referred to, 44. 

Winthrop, Robert C, quoted, 173. 

Wise, John, pleads for "the old New England Way," 
147. 

Wood, Anthony, quoted, 28. 



A Summer Visit of Three Rhode Islanders 
to the Massachusetts Bay in \65i 



BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Providence, R. I. 



Cloth, 12 mo., 115 pages. Price, $1.00 net. 

Uniform with Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 



An account of the visit of Dr. John Clarke, 
Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall, members 
OF the Baptist Church in Newport, R. I., to 
William Witter of Swampscott, Mass., in July, 
1651; ITS innocent purpose and its painful con- 
sequences. 



"Dr. King's pungent and conclusive essay is a 
timely contribution. He adduces competent evidence 
refuting the gratuitous insinuations of Palfrey and 
Dexter, who charged the Rhode Islanders in question 
with sinister political motives and excused their alleged 
maltreatment on that ground. Citations from original 
documents, with a bibliography, put the reader in 
position to verify the allegations of the author." — 
The Watchman. 

"The late Dr. Dexter, along with other Puritan 
apologists, is again successfully refuted; at the same 
time recently discovered evidence of Roger Williams' 
having been banished on account of 'his different 
opinions in matters of religion,' is advanced out of 
the mouths of his half-relenting persecutors." — The 
Evening Post. 



Sent postpaid upon receipt of the price by the 
publishers. 

PRESTON & ROUNDS CO. 

Providence, R. I. 



The Baptism of Roger Williams. 

A Review 
OF Rev. Dr. W. H. Whitsitt's Inference. 



BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Providence, R. I. 



With an Introduction by Rev. Jesse B. Thomas, D. D. 

Professor of Church History in the Newton 

Theological Institution. 



"We have to thank Dr. King for giving us so careful 
.and so convincing a statement of the grounds for the 
traditional belief. It could, indeed, make no difference 
with our duty as Baptists if Roger Williams had not 
been immersed; but we are glad to be reassured, by 
one so competent to present the facts in the case, that 
we may still claim our great Baptist pioneer as an 
immersed follower of the Lord. — The Examiner. 

"The argument of the book is decisive, in our 
opinion, and the book is a valuable contribution to 
Baptist historical literature." — The Western Recorder. 



Cloth, 12 mo., 145 pages. Price, $1.00 net. 

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Rcv^ John Myles, and the Founding; of 

Swansea and the First Baptist Church 

in Massachusetts* 



BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
Pastor of the First Baptist Ciiurch, Providence, R. I. 



Cloth, 12 m., 122 pages. Price, $1.00 net 

Uniform with Sir Henry Vane, Jr. 



'* Like all of Dr. King's historical papers, it is lumi- 
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early period of our denominational history." — Zion's 
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"The clear, easy flowing and invigorating style of 

the author makes the book most delightful reading. 

, So important is the subject treated that the 

book is an especially valuable one." — Providence 

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" An interesting historical study of the Puritan 
character, and the added notes are historically valua- 
ble." — Boston Transcript. 



PRESTON & ROUNDS CO. 
Providence, R. I. 



Religious Liberty. 



An Historical Paper. 



BY HENRY MELVILLE KING, 
Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Providence, R. I. 



"This is one of those highly satisfactory papers in 
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" The book is one that will command attention from 
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Cloth, 12 mo., 132 pages. Price, $1.00 net. 

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